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Book .C'* 


PRESENTED BY 




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THE LIFE 



AND 



CORRESPONDENCE 



OF 



ROBERT BURNS. 



BY 



ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 



LONDON: 

JAMES COCHRANE & CO., 
1836. 






Gift. 

MR. HUTCHESON 
25 C'05 



*- 



* 



THE LIFE OF 
ROBERT BURNS. 



PART I :— AYRSHIRE. 

The national poetry of Scotland, like her thistle, 
is the offspring of the soil. To the poems of our 
first James, the strains of forgotten minstrels, or the 
inspiration of shepherds and husbandmen, its origin 
has been ascribed. Where "proof cannot be procured, 
we must be content with conjecture : classic or 
foreign lore can claim no share in the inspiration 
which comes from nature's free grace and liberality. 
From whatever source our poetry has sprung, it 
wears the character and bears the image of the 
north : the learned and the ignorant have felt alike 
its tenderness and humour, dignity and ardour ; and 
both have united in claiming, as its brightest orna- 
ment, the poetry of Him of whose life and works I 
am now about to write. This, however, has already 
been done with so much affection by Currie, care by 
Walker, and manliness .by Lockhart — the genius, 
the manners, and fortunes of Burns have been dis- 
cussed so fully by critics of all classes, and writers of 
all ranks, that little remains for a new adventurer in 

B 



- . THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the realms of biography, save to extract from thel 
works of others a clear and judicious narrative. But, I 
like the artist who founds a statue out of old rnate-l 
rials, he has to reproduce them in a new shape, touch I 
them with the light of other feeling, and inform [ 
them with fresh spirit and sentiment. 

Robert Burns, eldest son of William Burness andl 
Agnes Brown his wife, was born 25th January, 
1759, in a clay-built cottage, raised by his father's 
own hands, on the banks of the Doon, in the district | 
of Kyle, and county of Ayr. The season was un- 
gentle and rough, the walls weak and new : — some 
days after his birth a wind arose which crushed the 
frail structure, and the unconscious Poet was car- 
ried unharmed to the shelter of a neighbouring 
house. He loved to allude, when he grew up, to this 
circumstance ; and ironically to claim some com- 
miseration for the stormy passions of one ushered 
into the world by a tempest. This rude edifice is 
now an alehouse, and belongs to the shoemakers of 
Ayr : the recess in the wall, where the bed stood in 
which he was born, is pointed out to inquiring guests : 
the sagacious landlord remembers, too, as he brings in 
the ale, that he has seen and conversed with Burns, 
and ventures to relate traits of his person and man- 
ners. There is nothing very picturesque about the 
cottage or its surrounding grounds : the admirers of 
the Muses' haunts will see little to call romantic in 
low meadows, flat enclosures, and long lines of 
public road. Yet the district, now emphatically 
called " The Land of Burns," has many attractions. 
There are fair streams, beautiful glens, rich pastures, 
picturesque patches of old natural wood ; and, if we 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. O 

may trust proverbial rhyme, " Kyle for a man" is 
a boast of old standing. The birth of the illus- 
trious Poet has caused the vaunt to be renewed in 
our own days. 

The mother of Burns was a native of the county 
of Ayr ; her birth was humble, and her personal at- 
tractions moderate ; yet, in all other respects, she was 
a remarkable woman. She was blessed with singu- 
lar equanimity of temper ; her religious feeling was 
deep and constant ; she loved a well-regulated house- 
hold ; and it was frequently her pleasure to give 
wings to the weary hours of a chequered life by 
chaunting old songs and ballads, of which she had 
a large store. In her looks she resembled her eldest 
son ; her eyes were bright and intelligent ; her per- 
ception of character, quick and keen. She lived 
till January 14th, 1820, rejoiced in the fame of the 
Poet, and partook of the fruits of his genius. 

His father was from another district. He was 
the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, and born in 
the year 1721, on the lands of the noble family of 
Keith Marischall. The retainer, like his chief, fell 
into misfortunes ; his household was scattered, and 
William Burness. with a small knowledge of farm- 
ing, and a large stock of speculative theology, was 
obliged to leave his native place, in search of better 
fortune, at the age of nineteen. He has been heard 
to relate with what bitter feelings he bade farewell 
to his younger brother, on the top of a lonely hill, 
and turned his face toward the border. His first 
resting-place was Edinburgh, where he obtained a 
slight knowledge of gardening : thence he went into 
Ayrshire, and procured employment first from Craw- 
ls 2 



4 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ford of Doonside, and secondly in the double ca- 
pacity of steward and gardener, from Ferguson of 
Doonholm. Imagining now that he Irad established 
a resting-place, he took a wife, December, 1757, 
leased a small patch of land for a nursery, and raised 
that frail shealing, the catastrophe of which has 
already been related. 

During his residence with the laird of Doonholm, 
a rumour was circulated that William Burness had 
fought for our old line of princes in the late re- 
bellion — the fatal 1745. His austere and somewhat 
stately manners caused him to be looked on as a man 
who had a secret in reserve, which he desired to con- 
ceal ; and, as a report of that kind was not calcu- 
lated for his good, he procured a contradiction from 
the hand of the clergyman of his native parish, ac- 
quitting him of all participation in the late " wicked 
rebellion. " I mention this, inasmuch as the Poet, 
speaking of his forefathers, says, " they followed 
boldly where their leaders led," and hints that they 
suffered in the cause which crushed the fortunes of 
their chief. Gilbert Burns, a sensible man, but no 
poet, imagined he read in his brother's words an 
imputation on the family loyalty, and hastened to 
contradict it, long after his father had gone where 
the loyal or rebellious alike find peace. He con- 
sidered his father's religious turn of mind, and the 
certificate of his parish minister as decisive : and so 
they are, as far as regards William Burness ; but 
the Keiths Marischall were forfeited before he was 
born, and the Poet plainly alludes to earlier matters 
than the affair of the " Forty-five."— " My ances- 
tors," he says, " rented lands of the noble Keiths 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. O 

Marischall, and had the honour of sharing their fate. 
I mention this circumstance, because it threw my 
father on the world at large." Here he means that 
the misfortunes of the fathers were felt by the chil- 
dren ; he was accurate in all things else, and it is 
probable he related what his father told him. The 
feelings of the Poet were very early coloured with 
Jacobitism. 

Though William Burness sought only at first to 
add the profits of a small stewardship to those of a 
little garden or nursery, and toiled along with his 
wife to secure food and clothing, his increasing fa- 
mily induced him to extend his views ; and he 
accordingly ventured to lease Mount Oliphant, a 
neighbouring farm of a hundred acres, and entered 
upon it in 1765, when Robert was between six and 
seven years old. The elder Burns seems to have 
been but an indifferent judge of land : in a district 
where much fine ground is in cultivation, he sat 
down on a sterile and hungry spot, which no labour 
could render fruitful. He had commenced, too, 
on borrowed money ; the seasons as well as the 
soil, proved churlish ; and Ferguson his friend 
dying, " a stern factor," says Robert, " whose 
threatening letters set us all in tears," interposed ; 
and he was compelled, after a six years' struggle, 
to relinquish the lease. This harshness was re- 
membered in other days : the factor sat for that 
living portrait of insolence and wrong in the " Twa 
Dogs." How easily may -endless infamy be pur- 
chased ! 

From this inhospitable spot William Burness 
removed his household to Lochlea, a larger and 



O THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

better farm, some ten miles oiF, in the parish of 
Tarbolton. Here he seemed at once to strike root 
and prosper. He was still strong in body, ardent in 
mind, and unsubdued in spirit. Every day, too, 
was bringing vigour to his sons, who, though mere 
boys, took more than their proper share of toil ; 
while his wife superintended, with care and success, 
the whole system of in-door economy. But it seemed 
as if fortune had determined that nought he set his 
heart on should prosper. For four years, indeed, 
seasons were favourable, and markets good ; but, in 
the fifth year, there ensued a change. It was in vain 
that he laboured with head and hand, and resolved 
to be economical and saving. In vain Robert held 
the plough with the dexterity of a man by day, and 
thrashed and prepared corn for seed or for sale, 
evening and morning, before the sun rose and after 
it set. " The gloom of hermits, and the unceasing 
moil of galley slaves," were endured to no purpose ; 
and, to crown all, a difference arose between the 
tenant and his landlord, as to terms of lease and ro- 
tation of crop. The farmer, a stern man, self-willed 
as well as devoutly honest, admitted but of one in- 
terpretation to ambiguous words. The proprietor, 
accustomed to give law rather than receive it, ex- 
plained them to his own advantage ; and the de- 
clining years of this good man, and the early years of 
his eminent son, were embittered by disputes, in which 
sensitive natures suffer and worldly ones thrive. 

Amid all these toils and trials, William Burness 
remembered the worth of religious instruction, and 
the usefulness of education in the rearing of his 
children, The former task he took upon himself, 



THE LITE OF ROBERT BURNS. / 

and, in a little manual of devotion still extant, sought 
to soften the rigour of the Calvinistic creed into the 
gentler Arminian. He set, too, the example which 
he taught. He abstained from all profane swearing 
and vain discourse, and shunned all approach to 
levity of conversation or behaviour. A week-day in 
his house wore the sobriety of a Sunday ; nor did he 
fail in performing family worship in a way which 
enabled his son to give the world that fine picture of 
domestic devotion, the " Cotter's Saturday Night." 
The depressing cares of the world, and a conscious- 
ness, perhaps, that he was fighting a losing battle, 
brought an almost habitual gloom to his brow. He 
had nothing to cheer him but a sense of having 
done his duty. The education of his sons he con- 
fided to other hands. At first he sent Robert to 
a small school at Alloway Miln, within a mile of the 
place of his birth ; but the master was removed to 
a be tter situation, and his place was supplied by 
John Murdoch, a candidate for the honours of the 
church, who undertook, at a moderate salary, to 
teach the boys of Lochlea, and the children of five 
other neighbouring farmers, reading, writing, arith- 
metic, grammar, and Latin. He was a young man. 
a good scholar, and an enthusiastic instructor, with 
a moderate knowledge of human nature, and a 
competent share of pedantry. He made himself ac- 
ceptable to the elder Burness by engaging in con- 
versations on speculative theology, and in lend- 
ing his learning to aid the other's sagacity and 
penetration ; and he rendered himself welcome to 
Robert by bringing him knowledge of any kind — 
by giving him books — telling him about eminent 



o THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

men— and teaching him the art — which he was not 
slow in learning — of opening up fresh sources of 
information for himself. 

Of the progress which Robert made in knowledge, 
his teacher has given us a very clear account. In 
reading, writing, and arithmetic, he excelled all boys 
of his own age, and took rank above several who 
were his seniors. The New Testament, the Bible, 
the English Grammar, and Mason's collection of 
verse and prose, laid the foundation of devotion and 
knowledge. As soon as he was capable of under- 
standing composition, Murdoch taught him to turn 
verse into its natural prose order ; sometimes to sub- 
stitute synonymous expressions for poetical words, 
and to supply all the ellipses. By these means he 
perceived when his pupil knew the meaning of his 
author, and thus sought to instruct him in the 
proper arrangement of words, as well as variety of 
expression. For some two years and a half, Robert 
continued to receive the instructions of his excellent 
teacher under his father's roof. On Murdoch's no- 
mination to the Grammar School of Ayr, his pupil 
did not forsake him, but took lodgings with him ; 
and, during the ordinary school hours, walks in the 
evening, and other moments of leisure, he sought to 
master the grammar, in order to take upon himself 
the task of instructing his brothers and sisters at 
home. Under the same kind instructor he strove to 
obtain some knowledge of French. " When walk- 
ing together, and even at meals," says Murdoch, 
"T was constantly telling him the names of different 
objects, as they presented themselves, in French, so 
that he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 9 

sometimes little phrases. In short, he took such 
pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was 
difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in 
the business ; and about the end of our second week 
of study of the French, we began to read a little of 
the Adventures of Telemachus, in Fenelon's own 
words." All the French which the young Poet 
picked up, during one fortnight's course of instruc- 
tion, could not be much ; the coming of harvest 
called him to more laborious duties ; nor did he, 
save for a passing hour or so, ever seriously resume 
his studies in Telemachus. 

Of these early and interesting days, during which 
the future man was seen, like fruit shaping amid the 
unfolded bloom, we have a picture drawn by the 
Poet's own hand, and touched off in his own vivid 
manner. — " At seven years of age I was by no 
means a favourite with any body. I was a good 
deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy 
something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic 
idiot piety — I say, idiot piety, because I was then 
but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some 
thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar ; 
and, by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I 
was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. 
The earliest composition that I recollect taking 
pleasure in, was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn 
of Addison's, beginning, 

" How are thy servants blest, O Lord !" 

I particularly remember one half- stanza, which was 
music to my ear — 

" For though on dreadful whirls we hung, 
High on the broken wave." 



10 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

I met with these in Mason's English collection, 
one of my school-books. The first two hooks I ever 
read in private, and which gave me more pleasure 
than any two I have read since, were the Life of 
Hannibal, and the History of the Acts and Deeds of 
Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young 
ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up 
and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, 
and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier ; while 
the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice 
into my veins, which will boil along there till the 
floodgates of life shut in eternal rest." 

The education of Burns was not over when the 
school-doors were shut. The peasantry of Scotland 
turn their cottages into schools ; and when a father 
takes his arm-chair by the evening fire, he seldom 
neglects to communicate to his children whatever 
knowledge he possesses himself. Nor is this know- 
ledge very limited ; it extends, generally, to the his- 
tory of Europe, and to the literature of the island ; 
but more particularly to the divinity, the poetry, and 
what may be called, the traditionary history of Scot- 
land. An intelligent peasant is intimate with all 
those skirmishes, sieges, combats, and quarrels, do- 
mestic or national, of which public writers take no 
account. Genealogies of the chief families are quite 
familiar to him. He has by heart, too, whole vo- 
lumes of songs and ballads ; nay, long poems some- 
times abide in his recollection ; nor will he think his 
knowledge much, unless he knows a little about the 
lives and actions of the men who have done most 
honour to Scotland. In addition to what he has on 
his memory, we may mention what he has on the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 11 

shelf. A common husbandman is frequently master 
of a little library : history, divinity, and poetry, 
but most so the latter, compose his collection. 
Milton and Young are favourites ; the flowery Me- 
ditations of Hervey, the religious romance of the Pil- 
grim's Progress, are seldom absent ; while of Scot- 
tish books, Ramsay, Thomson, Fergusson, and now 
Burns, together with songs and ballad-books innu- 
merable, are all huddled together, soiled with smoke, 
and frail and tattered by frequent use. The house- 
hold of William Burness was an example of what I 
have described ; and there is some truth in the as- 
sertion, that in true knowledge the Poet was, at nine- 
teen, a better scholar than nine-tenths of our young 
gentlemen when they leave school for the college. 

Let us look into this a little more closely ; nor 
can we see with a clearer light than what Burns 
himself has afforded us. — " What I knew of ancient 
story/' he observes, " was gathered from Salmon 
and Guthrie's Geographical Grammars ; and the 
ideas I had formed of modern manners, of literature 
and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, 
with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakspeare, Tul], 
and Dickson on Agriculture, the Heathen Pantheon, 
Locke on the Human Understanding, Stackhouse's 
History of the Bible, Justice's British Gardener's 
Dictionary, Boyle's Lectures, Allan Ramsay's 
Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original 
Sin, A Select Collection of English Songs, and 
Hervey's Meditations, had formed the whole of my 
reading." But when to these we add Young's Night 
Thoughts, which his own poems prove him to have 
admired, we cannot see that we have advanced far 



12 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

on the way in which he walked, when he disciplined 
himself for the service of the Scottish muse. In 
truth, none of the works we have enumerated, save 
the poems of Allan Ramsay, could be of farther use 
to him than to fill his mind with information, and 
shew him what others had done. The " Address to 
the Deil," " Highland Mary/' and " Tarn o' Shan- 
ter" are the fruit of far different studies. 

Burns had, in truth, a secret school of study, in 
which he set up other models for imitation than 
Pope or Hervey. — " In my infant and boyish days," 
he observes to Doctor Moore, " I owed much to 
an old woman who resided in the family (Jenny 
Wilson by name), remarkable for her ignorance, cre- 
dulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the 
largest collection in the country of tales and songs 
concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, 
warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, 
wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted 
towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This culti- 
vated the latent seeds of poesie ; but had so strong 
an effect upon my imagination that to this hour in 
my nocturnal rambles I sometimes keep a look-out 
in suspicious places." Here we have the Poet tak- 
ing lessons in the classic lore of his native land and 
profiting largely ; yet, to please a scholar like his 
correspondent, he calls his instructress an ignorant 
old woman, and her stories idle trumpery. Let the 
name of Jenny Wilson be reverenced by all lovers of 
the northern muse ; her tales gave colour and cha- 
racter to many fine effusions. The supernatural in 
these legends was corrected and modified by the 
natural which his growing sense saw in human life, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 13 

and found in the songs of his native land. — " The 
collection of songs," he says, " was my vade-me- 
cum. I pored over them, driving my^cart or walk- 
ing to labour, song by song, verse by verse, care- 
fully noting the true tender or sublime, from affecta- 
tion and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this 
practice much of my critic craft, such as it is." He 
is rarely if ever wrong in his remarks on the songs 
of Scotland. They had, in no remote day, the ad- 
vantages of the schooling which in these early hours 
he gave his fancy and understanding. 

He had not yet completed these unconscious 
studies. In his farther progress his mother was his 
instructress. Her rectitude of heart, and the fine 
example of her husband, made an impression too 
strong to be ever effaced from the mind of her son. 
This was strengthened by the songs and ballads 
which she commonly chaunted ; they all wore a 
moral hue. The ballad which she loved most to 
sing, or her son to hear, is one called " The Life 
and Age of Man." It is a work of imagination and 
piety, full of quaintness and nature ; it compares 
the various periods of man's life to the months of the 
year ; and the parallel is both ingenious and poetic. 
— " I had an old grand-uncle," says Burns, " with 
whom my mother lived a while in her girlish years : 
the good old man, for such he was, was long blind 
ere he died, during which time his highest enjoy- 
ment was to sit down and cry, while my mother 
would sing the simple old song of * the Life and Age 
of Man.' ' ; The mother of the Poet, on being ques- 
tioned respecting it by Cromek, some years before 
her death, repeated the ballad word for word, saying 



14 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

it was one of the many nursery songs of her mother, 
and that she first heard and learned it from her se- 
venty years before. The noble poem of " Man was 
made to Mourn, " bears a close resemblance to this 
old strain, both in language and sentiment. It 
taught Burns the art, which too few learn, of adding 
a moral aim to his verse ; and though he rose in song 
to the highest pitch of moral pathos and sublimity, 
he took his first lesson from this now neglected 
ballad. In all his letters and memoranda, we see 
him continually pointing to the rustic productions 
with which he was in youth familiar, and thus afford- 
ing us in some measure the means of knowing how 
little of his excellence is reflected from others, and 
how much we owe to his own inspiration. 

A student in art first studies the works of earlier 
masters ; as he advances, living figures are placed 
before him, that he may see nature with his own 
eyes. Burns, who knew nothing of academic rules, 
pursued a similar course in poetry. He had become 
acquainted with limb and lineament of the muse, as 
she had been seen by others : he could learn no 
more from the dead, and now had recourse to the 
living : he had hitherto looked on in silence ; it 
was now time to speak. Beauty first gave utter- 
ance to his crowding thoughts ; with him love and 
poetry were coevals. " You know," he says, in 
his communication to Moore, " our country cus- 
tom of coupling a man and woman together as 
partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth 
autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, a 
year younger than myself. My scarcity of English 
denies me the power of doing her justice in that 



THE LIIE OF ROBERT BURNS. 15 

language; but you know the Scottish idiom, ' she 
was a bonnie sweet sonsie lass/ In short, she alto- 
gether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that 
delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappoint- 
ment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philo- 
sophy, I hold to be the first of huihan joys, our 
dearest blessing here below ! How she caught the 
contagion I cannot tell. You medical people talk 
much of infection from breathing the same air, the 
touch, &c. ; but I never expressly said I loved her. 
Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much 
to loiter behind with her, when returning in the 
evening from our labours — why the tones of her 
voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Eolian 
harp — and particularly why my pulse beat such a 
furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her 
little hand to pick out the cruel nettle stings and 
thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, 
she sang sweetly ; and it was her favourite reel to 
which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in 
rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine 
that I could make verses like printed ones, com- 
posed by men who had Greek and Latin ; but my 
girl sung a song which was said to be composed by 
a country laird's son on one of his father's maids 
with whom he was in love : and I saw no reason why 
I might not rhyme as well as he — for, excepting that 
he could smear sheep and cast peats, his father 
living in the moorlands, he had no more scholar 
craft than myself. Thus with me began love and 
poetry." This intercourse with the softer and gen- 
tler part of the creation — this feeling in the presence 
of youth and loveliness, and desire to give voice to 



16 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

his passion in song — were, to his slumbering emo- 
tions, what the voice in scripture was, among the 
" dry bones of the valley," calling them into life 
and action. It is true that his brother looked upon 
some of the ladies of these early verses as so many 
moving broomsticks on which fancy hung her gar- 
lands. They seemed otherwise to the Poet, He 
saw charms in them which prosaic spirits failed to 
see. We would take the word of the muse in such 
matters against a whole battalion of men, 

" Who, darkling, grub this earthly hole 
In low pursuit." 

Having given, as he said, his " heart a heeze" 
among those soft companions, the Poet, like the 
picker of samphire on the beetling cliff, proceeded 
to seek farther knowledge in a perilous place — viz. 
among the young and the heedless — " the ram-stam 
squad, who zigzag on," without any settled aim 
or a wish ungratified. He offended his father, by 
giving his " manners a brush" at a country dancing- 
school. The good man had no sincere dislike, as 
some Calvinists have, to this accomplishment ; still 
he tolerated rather than approved of it ; he did not 
imagine that religion took to the barn-floor, 

" And reel'd and set, and cross'd, and cleeket ;" 

cracking her thumbs and distorting, as Milton says, 
her " clergy climbs," to the sound of a fiddle ; danc- 
ing, in short, he shook his head at, though he did not 
frown. The Poet felt, therefore, that in this he had 
approached at least to disobedience — a circumstance 
which he regrets in after-life, and regards as the first 
step from the paths of strictness and sobriety. " The 
will-o'-wisp meteors of thoughtless whim" began 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. J .' 

he says, to be almost the sole lights of his way ; yet 
early-ingrained piety preserved his innocence, though 
it could not keep him from folly. " The great mis- 
fortune of my life," he wisely observes, " was to want 
an aim. The only two openings by which I could 
enter the temple of fortune was the gate of niggardly 
economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain- 
making. The first is so contracted an aperture, I 
never could squeeze myself into it ; the last I always 
hated — there was contamination in the very entrance. 
Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong 
appetite for sociability, as well from native hila- 
rity as from a pride of observation and remark — a 
constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm that 
made me fly solitude : add to these incentives to 
social life my reputation for bookish knowledge, a 
certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought 
something like the rudiments of good sense ; and it 
will not seem surprising that I was generally a wel- 
come guest where I visited ; or any great wonder 
that where two or three met together, there was I 
among them. Another circumstance in my life, 
which made some alteration in my mind and man- 
ners, was, that I spent my nineteenth summer on a 
smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a 
noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dial- 
ling, &c, in which I made pretty good progress. 
But I made greater progress in the knowledge of 
mankind. The contraband trade was at that time 
very successful, and it sometimes happened to me to 
fall in with those who carried it on. Scenes of 
swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were till this 
time new to me ; but I was no enemy to social 

VOL. I. C 



18 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass and to 
mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went 
on with a high hand with my geometry till the sun 
entered Virgo — a month which is always a carnival 
in my bosom — when a charming fllette, who lived 
next door to the school, upset my trigonometry, and 
set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies." 
Nature, in all this, was pursuing her own plan in the 
education of Burns. The melancholy of which he 
complains was a portion of his genius ; the invi- 
sible object to which he was impelled was poetry. 
No one can fail to perceive, in the scenes which he 
describes as dear to his heart and fancy, the very 
materials over which his muse afterwards breathed 
life and inspiration ; and no one can fail to feel, 
that all this time he had been walking in the path 
of the muse without knowing it. 

He complains that he was unfitted with an aim. 
He looked around, and saw no outlet for his am- 
bition. Farming he failed to find the same as it 
is in Virgil — elegance united with toil. The high 
places of the land were occupied, and no one could 
hope to ascend save the titled or the wealthy. The 
church he could not reach without an expensive 
education, or patronage less attainable still. Law 
held out temptation to talent, but not to talent with- 
out money, while the army opened its glittering 
files to him who could purchase a commission, or 
had, in the words of the divine, 

, , A beauteous sister or convenient wife," 

to smooth the way to preferment. With a con- 
sciousness of genius, and a desire of distinction, lie 
stood motionless, like a stranded vessel whose sails 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS, 19 

are still set, her colours flying, and the mariners 
aboard. He had now and then a sort of vague inti- 
mation from his own heart that he was a poet ; but 
the polished and stately versification of English 
poetry alarmed and dismayed him : he had sung to 
himself a song or two, and stood with his hand on 
the plough, and his heart with the muse. The 
strength which he could not himself discover was not 
likely to be found out by others. It is thus we find 
him spoken of by his good old kind preceptor : — 
" Gilbert," says Murdoch, " always appeared to me 
to possess a more lively imagination, and to be 
more of the wit than Robert. I attempted to teach 
them a little church music. Robert's ear, in parti- 
cular, was remarkably dull, and his voice untune- 
able. It was long before I could get him to 
distinguish one tune from another. Robert's coun- 
tenance was generally grave, and expressive of a 
serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind. Gil- 
bert's face said — 

ff Mirth, with thee I mean to live ;" 

and, certainly, if any person who knew the two boys 
had been asked which of them was most likely to 
court the muses, he would surely never have guessed 
that Robert had a propensity of that kind." The 
simple schoolmaster had perhaps paid court to some 
small heritor's daughter, and dressed his face in 
smiles for the task ; he accordingly thought that 
the Muse was to be wooed and won in the same 
Malvolio way, and never imagined that the face in- 
spired with contemplation and melancholy could be 
dear to her heart. 

While the boy was thus rising into the man, and 
c2 



20 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the mind was expanding with the body, both were 
in danger of being crushed, as the daisy was, in the 
Poet's own immortal strains, beneath the weight of 
the furrow. The whole life of his father was a con- 
tinued contest with fortune. Burns saw, as he grew 
up, to what those days of labour and nights of anxiety 
would lead, and set himself, with heart and hand, 
to lighten the one and alleviate the other. At the 
plough, scythe, and reaping-hook he feared no com- 
petitor, and so set all fears of want in his own per- 
son at defiance : he felt but for his father. All this 
is touchingly described by Gilbert. " My brother, 
at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop 
of corn, and, at fifteen, was the principal labourer 
on the farm ; for we had no hired servant, male or 
female. The anguish of mind we felt, at our tender 
years, under these straits and difficulties, was very 
great. To think of our father growing old — for he 
was now above fifty, broken down with the long- 
continued fatigues of his life, with a wife and five 
other children, and in a declining state of circum- 
stances — these reflections produced in my brother's 
mind and mine, sensations of the deepest distress. 
At this time he was almost constantly afflicted in 
the evening with a dull head-ache, which, at a future 
period of his life, was exchanged for a palpitation of 
the heart, and a threatening of fainting and suffoca- 
tion in his bed in the night-time/' The elder 
Burness, while in the Lothians, had paid attention 
to gardening ; but he could not bring much agricul- 
tural knowledge from his native county. His toil 
was incessant ; but it was of the body, not of the 
brain. More is required in farming than mere 



THE LIFE 01 ROBERT BURNS. 21 

animal vigour and dexterity of hand. A skilful 
farmer may be called a learned man ; — to work ac- 
cording to the season, and in the spirit of the soil : 
to anticipate sunshine, and be prepared for storms : 
to calculate chances and consequences : suit de- 
mands at home, and fit markets abroad, require 
what not many fully possess. 

I know not how much of this knowledge William 
Burness possessed. He was. however, fertile in ex- 
pedients : when he found that his farm was unpro- 
ductive in corn, he thought the soil suitable for flax, 
and resolved himself to raise the commodity, while 
to the Poet he allotted the task of manufacturing it 
for the market. To accomplish this, it was necessary 
that he should be instructed in flax-dressing : ac- 
cordingly, at Midsummer, ITS 1 . Robert went to 
Irvine, where he wrought under the eye of one 
Peacock, kinsman to his mother. His mode of life 
was frugal enough. " He possessed,*' says Currie. 
;f a single room for his lodging, rented, perhaps, at 
the rate of a shilling a week. He passed his days in 
constant labour as a flax-dresser, and his food con- 
sisted chiefly of oatmeal sent to him from his father's 
family/' A picture of his situation and feelings is 
luckily preserved of his own drawing : the simplicity 
of the expression, and pure English of the style, are 
not its highest qualities. He thus wrote to his father: 
" Honoured Sir : — I have purposely delayed writing, 
in the hope that I should have the pleasure of seeing 
you on new-year's day : but work comes so hard 
upon us that I do not choose to be absent on that 
account. My health is nearly the same as when you 
were here, only my sleep is a little sounder, and on 



22 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the whole I am rather better than otherwise, though 
I mend by very slow degrees. The weakness of my 
nerves has so debilitated my mind that I dare neither 
review past wants, nor look forward into futurity : 
for the least anxiety or perturbation in my breast 
produces most unhappy effects on my whole frame. 
Sometimes, indeed, when for an hour or two my 
spirits are a little lightened, I glimmer a little into 
futurity ; but my principal, and indeed my only 
pleasurable employment is looking backwards and 
forwards in a moral and religious way. I am quite 
transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps 
very soon, I /shall bid an eternal adieu to all the 
pains, and uneasinesses, and disquietudes of this 
weary life ; for I assure you I am heartily tired of 
it : and, if I do not very much deceive myself, I 
could contentedly and gladly resign it. 

" As for this world," he continues, " I despair of 
ever making a figure in it. I am not formed for the 
bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay. I shall 
never again be capable of entering into such scenes. 
Indeed, I am altogether unconcerned at the thoughts 
of this life. I foresee that poverty and obscurity 
probably await me, and I am in some measure pre- 
pared, and daily preparing, to meet them. I have 
but just time and paper to return you my grateful 
thanks for the lessons of virtue and piety you have 
given me, which were too much neglected at the 
time of giving them, but which I hope have been 
remembered e*e it is yet too late." This letter is 
dated December 27, 1781. No one can mistake the 
cause of his melancholy : obscure toil and an undis- 
tinguished lot on earth, directed his thoughts in 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 23 

despair to another world, where the righteous " shall 
hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither 
shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." To plough, 
and sow, and reap were poetic labours, compared 
with the dusty toil of a flax-dresser : with the lark for 
his companion, and the green fields around him, his 
spirits rose, and he looked on himself as forming a 
part of creation : but when he sat down to the brake 
and the heckle, his spirits sank, and his dreams of 
ambition vanished. 

Flax-dressing, in the poet's estimation, seemed 
any thing but the way to wealth and fame : the de- 
sponding tone of his letter was no good augury ; the 
catastrophe of the business is not quite in keeping 
with quotations from Scripture and hopes in heaven. 
" Partly through whim," said the bard to Moore, 
" and partly that I wished to set about doing some- 
thing in life, I joined a flax-dresser in Irvine to learn 
his trade. This was an unlucky affair : as we were 
giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop 
took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left like a 
true poet, not worth a sixpence." This disaster was 
followed by one much more grievous. " The clouds 
oL misfortune," says Burns, " were gathering fast 
round my father's head. After three years tossing 
and whirling in the vortex of litigation, he was just 
saved from the horrors of a jail by a consumption, 
which after two years promises, kindly stept in and 
carried him away to where the * wicked cease from 
troubling, and the weary are at rest.' His all went 
among the hell-hounds that prowl in the kennel of 
justice. The finishing evil that brought up the rear 
of this infernal file was my constitutional melancholy 



24 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

being increased to such a degree, that for three 
months I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied 
by the hopeless wretches who have got their mit- 
timus — ■< Depart from me, ye accursed V " The intel- 
ligence, rectitude, and piety of William Burness were 
an honour to the class to which he belonged : his 
eminent son acknowledged, when his own inter- 
course with the world entitled his opinions to respect, 
that he had met with few who understood men, their 
manners and their ways, equal to his father : " but 
stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, un- 
governable irascibility," he added, " are disqualifying 
circumstances in the paths of fortune." " I remem- 
ber William Burness well," said the venerable Mrs. 
Hunter, daughter to Ferguson of Doonholm ; " there 
was something very gentlemanly in his manners 
and appearance : unfortunately for him my father 
died early, the estate passed into other hands, and 
was managed by a factor, who it is said had no 
liking for the family of Mount Oliphant." 

Robert and his brother were afflicted, but did not 
despair ; they collected together the little property 
which law and misfortune had spared, and, in the 
year 1784, took the farm of Mossgiel, near Mauchline, 
consisting of 118 acres, at an annual rent of ninety 
pounds. Their mother superintended the dairy and 
the household, while the Poet and Gilbert undertook 
for the rest. " It was," observes the latter, " a 
joint concern among us : every member of the family 
was allowed wages for the labour performed ; my 
brother's allowance and mine was seven pounds per 
annum, and his expenses never in any year exceeded 
his slender income. His temperance and frugality 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 2o 

were every thing that could be wished." It is 
pleasing to contemplate a picture such as this. 

We are now about to enter into the regions of 
romance. " I began," says Burns, " to be known 
in the neighbourhood as a maker of rhymes." The 
course of his life hitherto has shewn that his true 
vocation was neither the plough nor the heckle. He 
acquired, indeed, the common knowledge of a hus- 
bandman ; but that was all he knew or cared to 
know of the matter. " Farmer Attention," says the 
proverb, "is a good farmer all the world over :" and 
Burns was attentive as far as ploughing, sowing, 
harrowing, reaping, stacking, thrashing, winnowing, 
and selling went ; he did all this by a sort of mecha- 
nical impulse, but success in farming demands more. 
The farmer should know what is doing in his way in 
the world around ; he must learn to anticipate de- 
mand, and, in short, to time every thing. But he 
who pens an ode on his sheep when he should be 
driving them forth to pasture — who stops his plough 
in the half- drawn furrow, to rhyme about the flowers 
which he buries — who sees visions on his way from 
market, and makes rhymes on them — who writes an 
ode on the horse he is about to yoke, and a ballad on 
the girl who shews the whitest hands and brightest 
eyes among his reapers — has no chance of ever grow- 
ing opulent, or of purchasing the field on which he 
toils. The bard amidst his ripening corn, or walk- 
ing through his field of grass and clover, beholds on 
all sides images of pathos or of beauty, connects 
them with moral influences, and lifts himself to hea- 
ven : a grosser mortal sees only so many acres of 
promising corn or fattening grass, connects them 



26 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

with rising markets and increasing gain, and, in- 
stead of rising, descends into " Mammons filthy 
delve." That poetic feelings and fancies such as 
these passed frequently over the mind of Burns in 
his early days, we have his own assurance ; while 
labour held his body, poetry seized his spirit, and, 
unconsciously to himself, asserted her right and 
triumphed in her victory. 

Some obey the call of learning and become poets ; 
others fall, they know not how, into the company of 
the muse, and break out into numbers. Love was the 
voice which called up the poet in Burns ; his Par- 
nassus was the stubble-field, and his inspirer that 
fair-haired girl from whose hands he picked the 
thistle-stings, and delighted to walk with when but 
some fifteen years old. The song which he made 
in her praise he noted down in a little book, entitled 
" Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, by 
Robert Burness ; a man who had little art in making 
money, and still less in keeping it." " I composed 
the song," he said, long afterwards, "in a wild 
enthusiasm of passion, and I never recollect it but 
my heart melts and my blood sallies." The passion 
which he felt failed to find its way into the verse ; 
there is some nature, but no inspiration : — „ 

" My Nelly's looks are blythe and sweet, 
And what is best of a' — 
Her reputation is complete, 

And fair without a flaw. 
She dresses ay sae clean and neat, 

Both decent and genteel ; 
And then there's something in her gait 
Gars ony dress look weel." 

These lines give little indication of future strength ; 
his vigour of thought increased with his stature ; 



THE LIFE OF ROEERT BURNS. 27 

before he was a year older, the language of his muse 
was more manly and bold : — 

" I dreamed I lay where flowers were springing, 

Gaily in the sunny beam, 
Listening to the wild birds singing 

By a falling crystal stream ; 
Straight the sky grew black and daring, 

Thro' the woods the whirlwinds rave, 
Trees, with aged arms, are warring, 

O'er the swelling drumlie wave." 

Few of the early verses of Burns are preserved ; 
some he himself destroyed, others were composed, but 
not, perhaps, committed to paper ; while it is likely 
that not a few are entirely lost. In his nineteenth 
summer, the leisure season of the farmer, while 
studying mensuration at a school on the sea- coast, 
he met with the Peggy of one of his earliest songs. 
" Stepping into the garden." he says, " one charm- 
ing noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my 
angel — 

" Like Proserpine gathering flowers, 
. Herself a fairer flower." 

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at 
school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing 
but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal 
out to meet her ; and the two last nights of my stay 
in. the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the 
image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me 
guiltless/' On his return home the harvest was 
commenced. To the fair lass of Kirkoswald he dedi- 
cated the first fruits of his fancy, in a strain of equal 
freedom and respect, beginning — 

*' Now wastlin' winds and slaught'ring guns 

Bring autumn's pleasant weather ; 
The moorcock springs on whirring wings 

Amang the blooming heather; 
Now waving grain wide o'er the plain 

Delights the weary farmer, 
And the moon shines bright when I rove at night 

To muse upon my charmer." 



28 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURKS. 

In a still richer strain he celebrates his nocturnal 
adventures with another of the fair ones of the west. 
Burns could now write as readily as he could speak, 
and pour the passion which kindled up his veins into 
his compositions. It is thus he sings of Annie — 

S( I hae been blythe wi' comrades dear, 

I hae been merry drinkin' ; 
I hae been joyfu' gatherin 5 gear, 

I hae been happy thinkin' ; 
But a' the pleasures e'er I saw, 

Tho' three times doubled fairly, 
That happy night was worth them a' 

Amang the rigs o' barley." 

He who could write such lines as these had little 
to learn from the muse ; and yet he soon surpassed 
them in liquid ease of expression, and happy ori- 
ginality of sentiment. It is one of the delusions of 
his biographers, that the sources of his inspiration 
are to be sought in English poetry ; but, save an 
image from Young, and a word or so from Shak- 
speare, there is no trace of them in all his composi- 
tions. Burns read the English poets no doubt with 
wonder and delight : but he felt he was not of their 
school ; the language of life with him was wholly 
different ; the English language is, to a Scottish pea- 
sant, much the same as a foreign tongue ; it was not 
without reason that Murray, the oriental scholar, 
declared that the English of Milton was less easy to 
learn than the Latin of Virgil. Any one conversant 
with our northern lyrics will know what school of 
verse Burns imitated when he sang of Nannie— a 
lass who dwelt nigh the banks of Lugar : — 

" Behind yon hills where Lugar flows, 
'Mang moors an' mosses many, O ; 
The wintry sun the day has closed 
And I'll awa' to Nannie, O. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 29 

" Her face is fair, her heart is true, 
As spotless as she's bonnie, O ; 
The opening gowan, wat wi' dew, 
Xae purer is than Nannie, O." 

Such was the language in which the Poet ad- 
dressed the rustic damsels of Kyle ; ladies are not 
very apt to be won by verse, let it be ever so ele- 
gant, they set down the person who adorns them 
with the lilies and the roses of imagination as a 
dreamer, and look around for more substantial com- 
fort. Waller's praise made Sacharissa smile — and 
smile only ; and another lady of equal beauty saw 
in Lord Byron a pale-faced lad, lame of a foot, and 
married a man who could leap a five-barred gate ; 
yet Burns was, or imagined himself, beloved ; he 
wrote from his own immediate emotions ; his muse 
was no visionary dweller by an imaginary fountain, 
but a substantial 

" Fresh young landart lass," 

whose charms had touched his fancy. Xor was he one 
of those who look high and muse on dames nursed in 
velvet laps, and fed with golden spoons. " He had 
always," says Gilbert, " a particular jealousy of peo- 
ple who were richer than himself; his love, there- 
fore, rarely settled on persons of this description. 
When he selected any one out of the sovereignty of 
his good pleasure to whom he should pay his par- 
ticular attention, she was instantly invested with a 
sufficient stock of charms out of the plentiful stores 
of his own imagination ; and there was often a great 
dissimilitude between his fair captivator as she ap- 
peared to others, and as she seemed when invested 
with the attributes he gave her." His own words 
partly confirm the account of Gilbert. " My heart 



30 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up 
by some goddess or other ; and, as in every other war- 
fare of this world, my fortune was various, some- 
times I was received with favour, and sometimes 
mortified with repulse. " That his love was some- 
times repulsed, we have the assurance of a poem, 
now lost, in which, like Cowley, he had recorded 
his labours in the way of affection ; when doors 
were closed against him, or the Annie or Nannie of 
the hour failed in their promises, he added another 
verse to the ballad, the o'erword of which was, " So 
I'll to my Latin again." If he sought consolation 
in studying the Latin rudiments when jilted, his 
disappointments in that way could not be many, for 
his knowledge of the language was small. In his 
twenty-fourth year his skill in verse enabled him to 
add the crowning glory to his lyric compositions ; 
who the lady was that inspired it we are not told, 
but she must have been more than commonly beau- 
tiful, or more than usually kind : as the concluding 
compliment might have been too much for one, he 
has wisely bestowed it on the whole sex ; the praise 
of other poets fades away before it ; 

f « There's nought but care on every han', 
In every hour that passes, O ! 
What signifies the life o' man 
An' 'twere na for the lasses, O ! 

** Auld nature swears the lovely dears 
Her noblest work she classes, O ! 
Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, 
An' then she made the lasses, O !" 

One of those heroines was servant in the house- 
hold of General Stewart, of Stair and Afton ; 
Burns during a visit with David Sillar, left, it is 
said, one of his songs which was soon chaunted 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 31 

in bower and hall, and attracted the notice of Mrs. 
Stewart, a lady both beautiful and accomplished, 
who sent for the Poet on his next visit, and by her 
remarks and praise confirmed his inclination for lyric 
verse. He afterwards alluded to these interviews in a 
conversation with Anna Stewart of Afton, and said 
he should never forget with what trepidation of 
heart he entered the parlour and approached her 
mother : this early notice was also present to his 
mind in copying some of his later pieces of 
poetry : he addresses them — the original is now 
before me — to " Mrs. General Stewart of Afton, 
one of his first and kindest patronesses." The 
progress which Burns made in the more se- 
rious kind of verse during this lyrical fit was not 
at all so brilliant ; his attempts have more of the 
language of poetry than of its simple force and true 
dignity. There are passages, indeed, of great truth 
and vigour, but no continued strain either to rival 
his after flights, or compare with the unity and 
finished excellence of " My Nannie, O," and " Green 
grow the Rashes." He had prepared himself, how- 
ever, for those more prolonged efforts ; nature had 
endowed him with fine sensibility of heart and 
grandeur of soul ; he had made himself familiar with 
nature, animate and inanimate ; with the gentleness 
of spring, the beauty of summer, the magnificence 
of autumn, and the stormy sublimity of winter ; nor 
was he less so with rural man, and his passions and 
pursuits. Though indulging in no sustained flights, 
he had now and then sudden bursts in which his 
feelings over-mastered all restraint. The following 
stanza, written in his twenty-fourth year, shows he 



32 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

had read Young, and felt the resemblance which the 
season of winter bore to his own clouded fortunes : — 

" The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast, 

The joyless winter day, 
Let others fear, to me more dear 

Than all the pride of May ; 
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul, 

My griefs it seems to join ; 
The leafless trees my fancy please, 

Their fate resembles mine." 

" There is scarcely any earthly object," says 
x Burns, " gives me more — I do not know that I 
should call it pleasure — but something which exalts 
me, something which enraptures me — than to walk 
in the sheltered side of a wood or a high plantation, 
in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind 
howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. 
It is my best season for devotion : my mind is rapt 
up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him who, in the pom- 
pous language of the Hebrew bard, ' walks on the 
wings of the wdnd.' " In another mood he wrote what 
he called " a wild rhapsody, miserably deficient in 
versification, but full of the sentiment of my heart." 
This ditty wants harmony and vivid force of expres- 
sion : but it breathes of the old ballad : 

'.' My father was a farmer, 

Upon the Carrick border, 
And carefully he bred me up 

In decency and order: 
He bade me act a manly part, 

Though I had ne'er a farthing, 
For without an honest manly heart 

No man was worth regarding." 

In one of his desponding fits, when he " looked 
back on prospects drear," or beheld the future dark- 
ening, he wrote that Prayer in which some have seen 
nothing but sentiments of contrition and submis- 
siveness, and others a desire to lay on the Creator 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 33 

the blame of the follies with which he charges him- 
self. I have heard his enemies quote the following 
verse with an air of triumph : — 

*« Thou knowest that Thou hast formed me 
With passions wild and strong, 
And, listening to their witching voice, 
Has often led me wrong." 

Poetry had now become with Burns a darling 
pursuit : he had no settled plan of study, for he com- 
posed at the .plough, at the harrow, and with the 
reaping-hook in his hand, and usually had half-a- 
dozen or more poems in progress, taking them up as 
the momentary tone of his mind suited the senti- 
ment of the verse, and laying them down as he grew 
careless or became fatigued. None of the verses of 
those days are in existence, save the " Death of 
Poor Mailie," a performance remarkable for genuine 
simplicity of expression ; and " John Barleycorn," 
a clever imitation of the old ballads of that name, a 
favourite subject with the minstrels of Caledonia. 
His mode of composition was singular : when he 
hit off a happy verse in a random fit of inspiration, 
he sought for a subject suitable to its tone of lan- 
guage and feeling, and then completed the poem. 
This shows a mind full of the elements of poetry. 
" My passions," he said, " when once lighted up, 
raged like so many devils till they got vent in 
rhyme, and then the conning over my verses, like a 
spell, soothed all into quiet." 

When Burns succeeded in evoking the demon of 
passion by the spell of verse, he had leisure, or at 
least peace, for a time ; but he could not be idle : he 
turned his attention to prose. His boyish feelings 
had been touched, he tells us, on reading the Vision 

VOL. I. D 



34 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

of Mirza, and many passages in the Bible ; he had 
read too with attention a collection of letters by the 
wits of Queen Anne's reign. This improved his 
taste ; and as he grew up, and correspondence was 
forced upon him by business or by friendship, he 
was pleased to see that he. could express himself 
with fluency and ease. He thought so well of those 
performances that he made copies of them, and, 
in moments of leisure or vanity sought and found 
satisfaction in comparing them with the composi- 
tions of his companions. He observed, he said, his 
own superiority. Nay, he says he carried the whim 
so far, that though he had not three farthings' 
worth of business in the world, yet almost every 
post brought him as many letters as if he had been 
a plodding son of the day-book and ledger. He 
now extended his reading to the Spectator, the Man 
of Feeling, Tristram Shandy, Count Fathom, and 
Pamela : he studied as well as read them, and en- 
deavoured to form a prose style uniting strength 
and purity. There are passages of genuine ease 
and unaffected simplicity in his early as well as his 
later letters ; yet there is too much of a premeditated 
air, and a too obvious desire of showing what fine, 
bold, vigorous things he could say. No one, how- 
ever, can peruse his prose of those days without 
wonder ; it shows a natural vigour of mind and a 
talent for observation : there are out-flashings, too, 
of a fiery impetuosity of spirit worthy of a genius 
cultivated as well as lofty, and passages of great 
elegance and feeling. 

In his common-place book, his rhymes are accom- 
panied with explanations in prose, and, as he com- 
menced these insertions in April 1783, he has afforded 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 35 

us the means of measuring the extent of his acquire- 
ments in early life. He seemed not unconscious 
that he could say something worth the world's at- 
tention. — As he was but little indebted, he said, to 
scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his 
performances must be strongly tinctured with his 
unpolished, rustic way of life ; but it may be some 
entertainment to a curious observer of human nature, 
to see how a ploughman thinks and feels under the 
pressure of love, ambition, anxiety, grief, with the 
like cares and passions, w T hich, however diversified 
by the modes and manners of life, operate pretty 
much alike on all the species. 

In these compositions we may continually trace 
thoughts and images, which growing taste and in- 
creasing vigour enabled him afterwards to beautify 
and expand. The following passage suggested the 
fine stanza on happy love in the " Cotter's Saturday 
Xight :" — " Notwithstanding all that has been said 
against love, respecting the folly and wickedness it 
leads a young inexperienced mind into, still I think 
it in a great measure deserves the highest encomiums 
that have been passed upon it. If any thing on earth 
deserves the name of rapture or transport, it is the 
feelings of green eighteen, in the company of the 
mistress of his heart, when she repays him with an 
equal return of affection." 

In the same strain he traces, elsewhere, the con- 
nexion between love, music, and poetry, and points 
out as a fine touch in nature, that passage in a 
modern love composition — 

' ' As toward her cot he jogged along, 
Her name was frequent in his song/' 

D 2 



36 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" For my own part," he observes, " I never had 
the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I 
once got heartily in love, and then rhyme and song 
were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my 
heart." No one has accounted more happily for the 
passionate eloquence of his songs than he has done 
himself. 

That he extended his views, and desired, after 
having sung of the maidens of Carrick and Kyle, to 
celebrate their streams and hills, and statesmen and 
heroes, we have evidence enough in other parts of his 
works. — " I am hurt," he thus writes, August 1785, 
" to see the other towns, rivers, woods, haughs, &c. 
of Scotland immortalized in song, while my dear 
native country, the ancient bailieries of Carrick, 
Kyle, and Cunningham, famous, both in ancient and 
modern times, for a gallant and w r arlike race of in- 
habitants—a country w r here civil, and particularly 
religious liberty, have ever found their first support 
and their last asylum — a country, the birth-place of 
many famous philosophers, soldiers and statesmen, 
and the scene of many important events recorded in 
history, particularly a great many of the actions of 
the glorious Wallace — yet we have never had one 
Scotch poet of any eminence to make the fertile 
banks of Irvine, the romantic woodlands and seques- 
tered scenes of Ayr, and the heathy, mountainous 
source and winding sweep of the Doon, emulate 
Tay, Forth, Ettrick, and Tweed. This is a com- 
plaint I would gladly remedy ; but, alas ! I am far 
unequal to the task both in genius and education." 
No one ever remedied an evil of this kind with such 
decision and effect. The Ayr, the Doon, the Irvine, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 37 

and the Lugar are now flowing in light, nor have 
their heroes and their patriots been forgotten. 

In another passage he acquaints us with the models 
his muse set up for imitation ; the date is September 
1785. — " There is a noble sublimity, a heart-melting 
tenderness, in some of our ancient ballads, which 
shew them to be the work of a masterly hand, and it 
has often given me many a heart-ache to reflect that 
such glorious old bards — bards who very probably 
owed all their talents to native genius, yet have de- 
scribed the exploits of heroes, the pangs of disap- 
pointment, and the meltings of love, with such fine 
strokes of nature — that their very names — O, how 
mortifying to a bard's vanity ! — are now 6 buried 
among the wreck of things which were.' O, ye illus- 
trious names unknown ! who could feel so strongly 
and describe so well, the last, the meanest of the 
muses' train — one who, though far inferior to your 
nights, yet eyes your path, and, with trembling wing, 
would sometimes soar after you ; a poor rustic bard 
unknown pays this sympathetic pang to your me- 
mory. Some of you tell us, with all the charms of 
verse, that you have been unfortunate in the world, 
unfortunate in love : he, too, has felt the loss of his 
little fortune, the loss of friends, and, worse than all, 
the loss of the woman he loved. Like you, all his 
consolation was his muse ; she taught him in rustic 
measures to complain : happy could he have done it 
with your strength of imagination and flow of verse ! 
May the turf lie lightly on your bones, and may you 
now enjoy that solace and rest, which the world 
rarely gives to the heart tuned to all the feelings of 
poesie and love !" Much of the man and the poet is 



38 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

visible in this remarkable passage ; it prepares us 
for his approaching sun-burst of poetry, which 
lightened more than Carrick and Kyle. 

Those who imagine Burns to have been only a 
rhyming, raving youth, who sauntered on the banks 
of streams, in lonely glens, and by castles grey, 
musing on the moon, and woman, and other incon- 
stant things, do him injustice ; a letter in 1783 to 
his cousin, James Burness, writer in Montrose, 
shews something of the world around him. — " This 
country, till of late, was flourishing incredibly in the 
manufacture of silk, lawn, and carpet-weaving; and 
we are still carrying on a good deal in that way, but 
much reduced from what it was. We had also a 
fine trade in the shoe way, but now entirely ruined, 
and hundreds driven to a starving condition on ac- 
count of it. Farming is also at a very low ebb with 
us. Our lands, generally speaking, are mountainous 
and barren ; and our landholders, full of ideas of 
farming, gathered from England and the Lothian s, 
and other rich soils in Scotland, make no allowance 
for the odds in the quality of land, and consequently 
stretch as much beyond what in the event we will 
be found able to pay. We are also much at a loss 
for want of proper methods in our improvements of 
farming. Necessity compels us to leave our old 
schemes, and few of us have opportunities of being 
well informed on new ones. In short, my dear Sir, 
since the unfortunate beginning of this American 
war, and its still more unfortunate conclusion, this 
country has been, and still is decaying very fast." 
Here the poet is sunk, and the observing farmer 
rises: in the same letter he touches on a theme 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 39 

which had its influence on his own character and 
habits — at least he imagined so. 

ts There is a great trade of smuggling carried on 
along our coasts, which, how r ever destructive to the 
interests of the kingdom at large, certainly enriches 
this corner of it, but too often at the expense of our 
morals. However, it enables individuals to make, 
at least for a time, a splendid appearance ; but for- 
tune, as is usual with her when she is uncommonly 
lavish of her favours, is generally even with them 
at the last ; and happy were it for numbers of them 
if she w T ould leave them no worse than when she 
found them." At the period to which this refers, 
many farmers on the sea-coast were engaged in the 
contraband trade : their horses and servants were 
frequently employed in disposing, before the dawn, 
of importations made during the cloud of night ; and 
though Burns, perhaps, took no part in the traffic, he 
associated with those who carried it on, and seemed 
to think that insight into new w r ays of life and hu- 
man character more than recompensed him for the 
risk he ran. It is dangerous for a bare hand to 
pluck a lily from among nettles ; men of few vir- 
tues and many follies are unsafe companions. 

" I have often observed," he says, " in the course 
of my experience of human life, that every man, 
even the worst, has something good about him, 
though very often nothing else than a happy tem- 
perament of constitution inclining him to this or 
that virtue. For this reason no man can say in 
what degree any other person besides himself can 
be with strict justice called wicked. Let any of the 
strictest character for regularity of conduct among 



40 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

us examine impartially how many vices he has never 
been guilty of, not from any care or vigilance, but 
for want of opportunity ; and how many of the 
weaknesses of mankind he has escaped, because he 
was out of the line of such temptation. I say, any 
man who can thus think, will scan the failings, nay, 
the faults and crimes, of mankind around him, with a 
brother's eye. I have often courted the acquaintance 
of that part of mankind commonly known by the 
ordinary phrase of blackguards, sometimes further 
than was consistent with the safety of my character. 
Those who, by thoughtless prodigality or headstrong 
passions, have been driven to ruin, though disgraced 
by follies, I have yet found among them, in not a few 
instances, some of the noblest virtues, magnani- 
mity, generosity, disinterested friendship, and even 
modesty." All this is true ; but men of evil deeds, 
are not, till they have purified themselves, fit com- 
panions for the young and the inflammable. There 
is no human being so depraved as to be without 
something which connects him with the sympathies 
of life. Dirk Hatteraick, before he hung himself, 
made out a balanced account to his owners, shewing 
that, though he had cut throats and drowned bant- 
lings as a smuggler, he could reckon with the house 
of Middleburgh for every stiver. It is more pleas- 
ing to perceive, in the Poet's early prose, sentiments 
similar to those which he afterwards more poeti- 
cally expressed in his u Address to the Rigidly 
Righteous." 

" Then gently scan your brother man, 
Still gentler sister woman; 
Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, 
To step aside is human. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 41 

One point must still be greatly dark, 

The reason why they do it ; 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far, perhaps, they rue it." 

The people of Kyle were slow in appreciating this 
philosophy. When they saw him hand-and-glove 
with roving smugglers, or sitting with loose com- 
rades, who scorned the decencies of life, or looking 
seriously at a horde of gypsies huddled together in 
a kiln, or musing among " randie, gangrel bodies" in 
Posie Nancies, they could not know that, like a 
painter, he was studying character, and making 
sketches for future pictures of life and .manners : 
they saw nothing but danger to himself from such 
society. And here lies the secret of the complaint 
he has recorded against the world in his twenty- 
fourth year. — " I don't well know what is the reason 
of it, but, somehow or other, though I am pretty 
generally beloved, yet I never could find the art of 
commanding respect. I imagine it is owing to my 
being deficient in what Sterne calls the unders trap- 
ping virtue of discretion." No doubt of it. The 
sober and sedate saw that he respected not himself ; 
they loved him for his manliness of character, and 
eloquence, and independence ; but they grieved for 
a weakness out of which they could not see that 
strength and moral beauty would come. 

The glory of his poetry was purchased at a 
price too dear for himself. " In Irvine," says Gil- 
bert, " he had contracted some acquaintance of a 
freer manner of thinking, whose society prepared him 
for overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue, which had 
hitherto restrained him." — " The principal thing 
which gave my mind a turn," says Burns to Dr. 



42 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Moore, " was a friendship I formed with a young 
fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless child of 
misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic ; 
but a great man, taking him under his patronage, 
gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering 
his situation in life. The patron dying, just as he 
was ready to launch out into the world, he went to 
sea in despair. His mind was fraught with inde- 
pendence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I 
loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, 
and, of course, strove to imitate him ; in some 
measure I succeeded. I had pride before ; but he 
taught it to flow in proper channels. His knowledge 
of the world was vastly superior to mine, and I was 
all attention to learn. He was the only man I ever 
saw who was a greater fool than myself where woman 
was the presiding star ; but he spoke of illicit love 
with the levity of a sailor, which hitherto I had re- 
garded with horror. Here his friendship did me a 
mischief." Richard Brown, to whom this refers, 
survived the storms which threatened shipwreck to 
his youth, and lived and died respected. When 
spoken to on the subject, he exclaimed, " Illicit* 
love ! levity of a sailor ! The Poet had nothing to 
learn that way when I saw him first." 

That Burns talked and thought too freely and in- 
discreetly in his early years, we have evidence in verse. 
In his memorandum-book there are entries which, 
amid all their spirit and graphic beauty, contain 
levities of expression which may be tolerated when 
the wine is flowing and the table in a roar, but which 
look not so becoming on the sober page which re- 
flection has sanctioned. In May, 1785, he wrote the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 43 

lively chaunt called " Robin, " in which he gives an 
account of his birth. 

'« There was a lad was born in Kyle, 
But whatna day o' whatna style 
I doubt its hardly worth our while 
To be so nice wi' Robin. 

" The gossip keekit in his loof, 
Quo' she wha lives will see the proof 
This waly boy will be nae coof— 

I think we'll ca' him Robin. 

«« But sure as three times three make nine, 
I see, by ilka score and line, 
This chap will dearly love our kin', 

So leeze me on thee, Robin." 

In these lines he approaches the border-land 
between modesty and impropriety — we must quote 
no farther, nor seek to shew the Poet in still 
merrier moods. Burns, in all respects, arose from 
the people : he worked his way out of the dark- 
ness, drudgery and vulgarities of rustic life, and, in 
spite of poverty, pain, and disappointment, emerged 
into the light of heaven. He was surrounded by 
coarse and boisterous companions, who were fit for 
admiring the ruder sallies of his wit, but incapable 
' of understanding those touches of moral pathos and 
exquisite sensibility with which his sharpest things 
are accompanied. They perceived but the thorns 
of the rose — they felt not its fine odour. The spirit 
of poesie led him, in much peril, through the pro- 
saic wilderness around, and prepared him for assert- 
ing his right to one of the highest places in the land 
of song. 

As the elder Burness was now dead, the Poet had 
to exercise his own judgment in the affairs of Moss- 
giel : at first all seemed to prosper. — " I had en- 
tered," he says, " upon this farm with a full resolu- 



44 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 



tion — « Come, go to, I will be wise ;' I read farming 
books ; I calculated crops ; I attended markets ; 
and, in short, in spite of the devil, the world and the 
flesh, I believe I should have been a wise man ; but 
the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, 
the second from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. 
This overset all my wisdom, and I returned, 'like the 
dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed, to 
her wallowing in the mire.'" — " The farm of Moss- 
giel," says Gilbert, " lies very high, and mostly on a 
cold, wet bottom. The first four years that we were 
on the farm were very frosty, and the spring was 
very late. Our crops, in consequence, were very 
unprofitable, and, notwithstanding our utmost dili- 
gence and economy, we found ourselves obliged to 
give up our bargain, with the loss of a considerable 
portion of our original stock." The judgment could 
not be great which selected a farm that lay high, on 
a cold, wet bottom, and purchased bad seed-corn. 
That Burns put his hand to the plough and laboured 
incessantly, there can be no doubt — but an unset- 
tled head gives the hands much to do : when he 
put pen to paper, all thoughts of crops and cattle 
vanished ; he only noted down ends of verse and 
fragments of song : his copy of Small's Treatise on 
Ploughs is now before me ; not one remark appears 
on the margins ; but on the title-page is written 
" Robert Burns, Poet." He had now decided on 
his vocation. 

This study of song, love of reading, wanderings in 
woods, nocturnal excursions in matters of love and 
choice of companions, who had seen much and had 
much to tell, was, unconsciously to himself, forcing 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 45 

Burns upon the regions of poesie. To these may be 
added the establishment of a club, in which subjects 
of a moral or domestic nature were discussed. The 
Tarbolton club consisted of some half-dozen young 
lads, sons of farmers ; the Poet who planned it was 
the ruling star ; the place of meeting was a small 
public-house in the village ; the sum expended by 
each was not to exceed three-pence, and with the 
humble cheer which this could bring, they were, 
when the debate was concluded, to toast their 
lasses and the continuance of friendship. Here he 
found a vent for his own notions, and as the club 
met regularly and continued for years, he disciplined 
himself into something of a debater, and acquired a 
readiness and fluency of language ; he was never at 
a loss for thoughts. 

Burns drew up the regulations. — " As the great 
end of human society," says the exordium, " is to 
become wiser and better, this ought, therefore, to be 
the principal view of every man in every station of 
life. But as experience has taught us, that such 
studies as inform the head and mend the heart, when 
long continued, are apt to exhaust the faculties of 
the mind, it has been found proper to relieve and 
unbend the mind by some employment or another 
that may be agreeable enough to keep its powers in 
exercise, but, at the same time, not so serious as to 
exhaust them. But, superadded to this, by far the 
greater part of mankind are under the necessity of 
earning the sustenance of human life by the labour 
of their bodies, whereby not only the faculties of the 
mind, but the sinews and nerves of the body, are so 
fatigued that it is absolutely necessary to have re- 



46 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

course to some amusement or diversion, to relieve 
the wearied man worn down with the necessary 
labours of life." The first meeting was held on 
Halloween, in the year 1780. Burns was president, 
and the question of debate was, " Suppose a young 
man, bred a farmer, but without any fortune, has it 
in his power to marry either of two women, the one 
a girl of large fortune, but neither handsome in per- 
son nor agreeable in conversation, but who can 
manage the household affairs of a farm well enough ; 
the other of them, a girl every way agreeable in per- 
son, conversation, and behaviour, but without any 
fortune: which of them shall he choose?" Other 
questions of a similar tendency were discussed, and 
many matters regarding domestic duties and social 
obligations were considered. This rustic institution 
united the means of instruction with happiness ; but, 
on the removal of the poet from Lochlea, it lost the 
spirit which gave it life, and dissensions arising, the 
club was scattered, and the records, much of them in 
Burns' han<J-writing, destroyed. 

No sooner was the Poet settled at Mossgie'l, than 
he was requested to aid in forming a similar club*in 
Mauchline. The regulations of the Tarbolton insti- 
tution suggested those of the other ; but the fines for 
non-attendance, instead of being spent in drink, were 
laid out in the purchase of books ; the first work 
thus obtained was the Mirror, the second the 
Lounger, and the time was not distant when the 
founder's genius was to supply them w T ith a work not 
destined soon to die. This society subscribed for the 
first edition of the poems of its celebrated associate. 
The members were originally country lads, chiefly 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. -17 

sons of husbandmen — a description of persons, in the 
opinion of Burns, more agreeable in their manners, 
and more desirous of improvement, than the smart, 
self-conceited mechanics of towns, who were ready to 
wrangle and dispute on all topics, and whose vanity 
would never allow that they were confuted. 

• One of the biographers of Burns has raised what 
the Poet calls " a philosophic reek" on the propriety 
of rehning the minds of hinds and farmers by means 
of works of elegance and delicacy ; without believing, 
with Currie, that if not a positive evil it is a doubt- 
ful blessing, we may question whether more than a 
dozen out of ten thousand kinds and mechanics 
would feel inconvenience from increased delicacy of 
taste. On a vast number such lessons would be 
utterly lost, for no polish can convert a common 
pebble into a diamond ; while from the minds of many 
it would remove the weeds with the same discrimi- 
nating hand that the Poet cleared his riggs of corn, 
and " spared the symbol dear," the Scottish thistle. 
In truth, the danger which Currie dreaded has been 
encountered and overcome : more than all the works 
he enumerated as forming the reading of Burns are 
to be found in the hands of the peasantry of Scotland. 
Milton, Thomson, Young, poets of the highest order 
and of polished elegance, are as well known to the 
peasantry as the Bible is ; yet no one has complained 
that a furrow more or less has been drawn in conse- 
quence, that our shepherds smear their sheep with 
too delicate a finger, and that our rustics are op- 
pressed by a fastidious nicety of taste. 

It would have been better for the Poet if he had 
maintained that purity in himself, which, in the 



48 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

regulations of his clubs, he desired to see in others. 
The consequences of keeping company with the free 
and the joyous were now to be manifested. Soon 
after his father's death one of his mother's maids, in 
person not at all attractive, produced his 

** Sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess," 

and furnished him with the opportunity of standing 
as a sinner on the stool of repentance, and comme- 
morating the event in rhymes, licentious as well as 
humorous. He had already sung of his own birth 
in a free and witty way, and he now put a song into 
the mouth of the partner of his folly, in which she 
cries, with rather more of levity than sorrow — 

(( Wha will own he did the faut, 
Wha will buy my groanin-maut, 
Wha will tell me how to ca't ? 
The rantin' dog, the daddie o't. 
" When I mount the creepie chair, 
Wha will sit beside me there ? 
Gie me Rob, I ask nae mair, 
The rantin' dog, the daddie o't." 

Nor can any one applaud the taste of " Rob the 
Rhymer's Address to his Illegitimate Child :" he 
. glories in a fault which, he imagines, perplexed the 
church; for he sought not to conceal from himself 
that both the minister and elders were all but afraid 
of meddling with a delinquent who could make the 
country merry at their expense. In a third poem 
he gives a ludicrous account of his appearance before 
the session, and of the admonition he received. In- 
stead of promising amendment, he draws consolation 
from Scripture with equal audacity and wit : — 

" King David, of poetic brief, 

Wrought 'mang the lasses such mischief 
As filled his after life with grief, 

And bloody rants, 
And yet he's ranked 'mang the chief 

Of lang syne saunts. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 49 

« And maybe, Tarn, for a' my cants, 
My wicked rhymes, and drunken rants, 
I'll give auld Cloven-Clootie's haunts 

An unco slip yet, 
And snugly sit amang the saunts 

At Davie's hip yet." 

It is painful to touch, even with a gentle hand, 
on the moral sores of so fine a genius, but his 
character cannot be understood otherwise : almost 
any other erring youth would have resigned himself, 
without resistance, to the discipline of the kirk, and 
bowed to its rebuke : Burns was not to be so tamed 
— stricken, he struck again, and, instead of courting 
silence and seclusion, sung a new song, and walked 
out into the open sunshine of remark and observa- 
tion. I cannot set this regardlessness down to 
growing hardness within, or to petrified feeling : it 
arose from a want of taste in seeking distinction. 
" The mair they talk, I'm kenn'd the better," he 
had already adopted as a motto ; he knew that folly 
such as his was not uncommon, and he hoped for 
one person w T ho censured, there would be two who 
thought him a clever fellow, with wit at will — a 
little of a sinner, but a great deal of a poet. 

This desire of distinction was strong in Burns. 
In those days he would not let a five pound note 
pass through his hands without bearing away a witty 
endorsement in rhyme : a drinking-glass always 
afforded space for a verse : the blank leaf of a book 
was a favourite place for a stanza ; and the windows 
of inns, and even dwelling-houses which he fre- 
quented, exhibit to this day lively sallies from his 
hand. Yet, perhaps, a love of fame was not stronger 
in him than in others. In his time magazines w^ere 
few, and newspapers not numerous ; into the daily, 

VOL. i. e 



50 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

weekly, or monthly papers, aspirants in verse can 
now pour their effusions : but Burns had no such 
facilities when he started, and was obliged to take 
the nearest way to notice. He began, likewise, to 
talk of his exploits over the pint-stoup : he gave to 
himself, in one of his rhymes, the name of " drunken 
ranter," and with ordinary powers, and but a mo- 
derate inclination, desired to be numbered with five- 
bottle debauchees, who saw three horns on the moon, 
and had 

" A voice like the sea, and a drouth like a whale." 

He went farther : he asserted, with Meston, good 
rhyme to be the product of good drink, and sung — 

" I've seen me daiz't upon a time 
I scarce could wink, or see a styme, 
Just ae half-mutchkin does me prime, 

Ought less is little ; 
Then back I rattle on the rhyme 
As gleg's a whittle." 

This vaunted insobriety in verse must not be taken 
literally. We have seen Burns passionately in love 
in rhyme — we know that he was not less so with his 
living goddess of the hour; but it was otherwise with 
him in the matter of strong drink. He was no prac- 
tised toper, but thought it necessary to look a gay 
fellow in poetry. Inspiration, in both ancient and 
modern times, has been imputed to wine, and Burns 
wished to be thought inspired. Wine was out of his 
reach ; his muse found her themes among humble 
and familiar things, and it was his boast that the 
Ferintosh could work intellectual wonders as well 
as the Falernian. For others, he wished Parnassus 
a vineyard ; but for himself, he preferred the banks 
of the Ayr or the Lugar to those of Helicon, and the 
blood of barley to that of the grape. When he had 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 51 

neither money to spend on liquor, nor health to re- 
lish it, he was chaunting songs in honour of tippling; 
putting himself down in the list of topers, and re- 
cording that whiskey was the northern ambrosia, 
too good for all, save gods or Scotsmen. This is not 
unlike the madness of Johnson from poverty, at 
College. In the case of Burns, there was something 
national as well as personal : whiskey and ale are 
the offspring of the Scottish vales, and he preferred 
them to " dearthfu' wine or foreign gill." Liquor 
was not then, and I believe never was, a settled 
desire of soul with the Poet. 

When Burns supposed that his " drunken rants" 
and nocturnal excursions among the lasses of Kyle, 
had made him 

" Slander's common speech, 

A text for infamy to preach,"" 

he found, to his surprise, that in another way he had 
won the approbation of certain ministers of the kirk 
of Scotland. How this came about may be briefly 
described. Calvinism, at that time, was agitated 
with a schism among its professors, and the factions 
were known hr the west by the names of Old Light 
and Xew Light. The Old Light enthusiasts aspired 
to be ranked with the purest of the Covenanters ; 
they patronized austerity of manners and humility 
of dress, and stigmatized much that the world loved, 
as things vain and unessential to salvation. The 
Xew Light countenanced no such self-denial ; men 
were permitted to gallop on Sunday, to make merry 
and enjoy themselves; and women were indulged in 
the article of dress, and failings or follies were treated 
with mercy at least, if not indulgence. The former 
refused to lean on the slender reed of human works 



52 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

thought a good deed savoured of selfishness, and that 
faith, and faith alone, was the light which led to 
heaven : the latter thought a cheerful heart was an 
acceptable thing with God ; that good works helped 
to make a good end, and that faith, and faith alone, 
was not religion, but a false light, which led to per- 
dition. Like the writers in the late singular con- 
troversy on Art and Nature in poetry, the divines of 
the west of Scotland perhaps never concluded that 
faith and works were both essential to salvation, 
and that, in truth, Christianity required them. Each 
side thundered from the pulpit ; their sermons par- 
took of the character of curses, and their conversa- 
tion in private life had the hue of controversy. 
Their parishioners, too, raised up their voices — for, 
in Scotland, the meanest peasant can be eloquent 
and puzzling on speculative theology — and the 
whole land rung with mystical discussions on effec- 
tual calling, free grace, and predestination, when 
Burns precipitated himself into the midst of the 
conflict. 

The Poet sided with the New Light faction. For 
this several reasons may be assigned — he was not 
educated closely in the tenets of Calvinism ; and . 
his own good taste and sense taught him that faith 
without works was folly. His experience in church 
discipline, in the case of " Sonsie Bess," had not 
tended to increase his reverence for the Old Light 
professors, among whom " Daddie Auld," his parish 
pastor, was a leader. Moreover, Gavin Hamilton, 
of whom he held his land, was not only a New- 
light-ite, but a friend of the Poet, and a martyr 
in the cause of free-agency. We may add to all 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. >•> 

this, that the Poet naturally fell into the ranks of 
those who allowed greater liberty of speech, and a 
wider longitude of morals. Perhaps the chiefs of 
the Old Light association would have regarded little 
an attack in prose, as to such missiles they were 
accustomed ; but their new enemy assaulted them 
with a weapon against which the armour of dulness 
was no defence. He attacked and vanquished them 
with witty verse, much to the joy of the children 
of the New Light, and greatly to the amusement of 
the country. 

Of the effect of these satiric attacks, the Poet himself 
gives an account to Moore : — " The first of my poetic 
offspring which saw the light was a burlesque lamen- 
tation on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, 
both of them dramatis per sonce in my " Holy Fair." 
I had a notion myself that the piece had some merit : 
but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a 
friend who was very fond of such things, and told 
him that I could not guess who was the author of it, 
but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain 
description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with 
a roar of applause. ' Holy Willie's Prayer' next 
made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk-session 
so much, that they held several meetings to look over 
their spiritual artillery — if haply any of it might 
be pointed against profane rhymers." This is almost 
all that the Poet says of his satiric labours in aid of 
the New Light. The poem to which he first alludes 
is called " The Holy Tuilzie," and relates the bicker- 
ing and battling which arose between Moodie, mi- 
nister of Riccarton, and Russel, minister of Kilmar- 
nock — both children of the Old Light. The poetic 



54 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

merit of the piece is small ; the personalities marked 
and strong. " The Ordination" succeeded, and is 
in a better vein. There is uncommon freedom of 
language and happiness of expression in almost 
every verse. The crowning satire of the whole is 
" Holy Willie's Prayer," a daring work, personal, 
poetical, and profane. The hero of the piece was a 
west-country pretender to superlative godliness ! 
one of the Old Light faction ; an elder of the kirk 
— a man with many failings, who made himself 
busy in searching for faults in the flock. Burns 
first signalized him in an epitaph, in which he con- 
signs him to reprobation, and then warns the devil 
that to lay his " nine-tailed cat" on such a con- 
temptible delinquent would be little to his own 
credit. Then he makes Willie honestly confess his 
own backslidings, and explain predestination in a 
way that causes us to shudder as well as to smile : — 

(l O Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, 
For reasons best kent to thysel, 
Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, 

A' for thy glory ; 
And no for either good or ill 

They've done afore thee." 

He next bethinks him of his own glory and errors ; 
the latter, it is quite plain, he considers but as spots 
in the sun — specks in the cup of the cowslip. He 
claims praise in the singular, and acknowledges folly 
in the plural : — 

"And sometimes, too, with worldly trust 
Vile self gets in, 
But Thou remembers we are dust, 
Defiled in sin." 

Nor can Burns be said to have overlooked his 
own interest ; he compliments Hamilton of Mossgiel 
as one — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 55 

" Who has so many taking arts, 

O'er great and sma", 
Frae God's ain priests the people's hearts 
He wiles awa." 

In a similar strain of poetry and wit, he, in another 
poem of the same period, congratulates Goudie of 
Kilmarnock on his work respecting revealed reli- 
gion. The reasoning and the learning of the essay- 
ist are slumbering with all forgotten things ; but 
the verses they called into life are not fated soon 
to die : 

" O Goudie, terror of the Whigs, 
Dread of black coats and reverend wigs, 
Sour Bigotry on her last legs 

Girning looks back, 
Wishing the ten Egyptian plagues 

Would seize ye quick.'' 

In after-life, the Poet seemed little inclined to 
remember the verses he composed on this ridiculous 
controversy ; and I have heard that he was un- 
willing to talk about the subject. Perhaps he felt 
that he had launched the burning darts of verse 
against men of blameless lives, and honesty, and 
learning ; that his muse had wasted some of her 
time on a barren and profitless topic, and had sung 
less from her own heart than for the gratification of 
others. Of all these poems, he admitted but the 
" Ordination'' into his works, willing, it would 
seem, to let the rest die with the controversy which 
occasioned them. The Xew Light professors 
seemed to care little what sort of weapon they em- 
ployed : the verse of Burns has two edges like a 
Highland sword, and Presbyterianism suffered as 
well as the Old Light. It is almost incredible that 
venerable clergymen applauded those profane sal- 
lies, learned them by heart, carried copies in their 



56 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

pockets, and quoted and recited them till they grew 
popular, and were on every lip. Even " Holy Willie's 
Prayer" was countenanced by the New Light pas- 
tors. Among the Poet's papers was found an epistle 
to the Rev. John MacMath, enclosing a copy of the 
Prayer which he had requested ; the date of this 
communication, 17th September, 1785, fixes the 
season of this western dispute, It seems, however, 
to approach the close ; the Poet is grown weary of 
his work, as well he might : 

" My musie, tired with many a sonnet, 
On gown and band and douce black bonnet, 
Is grown right eerie now she's done it, 

Lest they should blame her, 
And rouse their holy thunder on it, 

And anathem her." 

Burns, during this drudgery, was strengthening his 
hands for higher and purer duties. 1 1 labouring to 
accommodate his thoughts, and 

«f Riving the words to gar them clink" 

in unison with the technicalities of mystical con- 
troversy, he was acquiring an almost audacious 
vigour of expression, and a ready skill in handling 
subjects either of fact or of fancy. It is true that 
he learned to speak profanely, but then this was in 
the service of the kirk ; he learned something more 
when he dined with drunken lawyers, and grew 
tipsy among godly priests. The muse of Kyle 
helped to extinguish the Old Light, but she left 
predestination where she found it. A Mauchline 
mason said to the Poet, when he read him " Holy 
Willie's Prayer," " It's a' very weel and very witty, 
and I have laughed that shouldna have laughed ; 
but ye'll no hinder me from thinking that Providence 



THE LIFE OF r6£ERT BURNS. 57 

kend weel what he was doing when he made man — 
foresaw the upshot — wha was to be good and wha 
was to be bad ; and knowing this, and making man 
a fallible creature still, looks as like predestination 
as ought I ever heard of." 

These satiric rhymes established the fame of Burns 
in his native place : his company was now courted 
by country lairds, village lawyers, and parish school- 
masters, and by all persons who had education above 
common, or kept some state in their households. 
He was always welcome to Gavin Hamilton and his 
family : equally so to Robert Aikin, a worthy writer 
in Ayr; and now he became so to all who had any 
relish for wit or any soul for poetry. He was at 
once the companion of the grave and of the giddy ; 
now dining with the minister and a douce friend or 
two at the manse ; then presiding in a Mason meet- 
ing, chaunting songs, and pushing about the punch 
with the " brethren of the mystic level," or com- 
muning on the severity of the excise laws with a 
11 blackguard smuggler," or some highland envoy 
from the dominions of Ferintosh, whose " cousin did 
as good as keep a small still." When he appeared 
in company he was expected to say something 
clever or shrewd ; he was pointed out at church and 
at market, and peasant spoke of him to peasant as a 
wild, witty lad, who lived at Mossgiel, and had all 
the humour of Ramsay, and more than the spirit of 
Fergusson. 

It is humiliating to think that works which Burns 
seemed willing to forget brought him first into notice. 
Some of the most exquisite lyrics ever said or sung 
failed to do for him what " The Holy Tuilzie"' and 



58 THE LIFE ai ROBERT BURNS. 

" The Ordination" accomplished at once: and there 
can be no question that " Holy Willie's Prayer" and 
the " Epistle to Goudie" prepared the minds of the 
people around him for admiring his " Halloween" and 
his " Cotter's Saturday Night." In truth, poetry, 
which only embodies sentiments and feelings common 
to our nature, cannot compete in the race of immediate 
fame with verse appealing to our passions and our 
prejudices, and glowing with the heat of a passing 
dispute. Time settles and explains all. The true 
Florimel is found to be of delicate flesh and blood, 
breathing of loveliness and attraction, and adorned 
by nature ; while the false Florimel is discovered to 
be a thing of shreds and patches, with jewels of 
glass, and an artificial complexion. Nature and 
truth finally triumph, and to nature and truth Burns 
accordingly returned. He left the agitated puddles 
of mysticism to drink at the pure springs with the 
muse of love, and joy, and patriotism. 

Of the person and manners of the Poet, at 
this important period of his life, we have various 
accounts ; but the portraits, though differing in pos- 
ture as w T ell as in light and shade, all express the 
same sentiment. He was now grown up to man's 
estate, and had taken his station as such in society ; 
he was the head, too, of his father's house, and though 
his expences were regulated upon a system of close 
economy, his bargains as a farmer, controlled by his 
brother Gilbert, and his demeanour at the fireside 
under the mild influence of his mother, he had in all 
other matters his own will. He has recorded much 
of himself at this period both in verse and prose, nor 
can this be set down to egotism : from all the world, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 59 

save the little community of Kyle, he was com- 
pletely shut out, and he turned his eyes on himself, 
and wrote down his own hopes and aspirations. He 
has even recorded his stature in rhyme : — 

< f O ! why the deuce should I repine, 
Or be an ill foreboder ? 
I'm twenty-three, and five feet nine — 
I'll go and be a sodger." 

His large dark expressive eyes ; his swarthy 
visage ; his "broad brow, shaded with black waving 
hair; his melancholy look, and his well-knit frame, 
vigorous and active — all united to draw men's eyes 
upon him. He affected, too, a certain oddity of 
dress and manner. He was clever in controversy ; 
but obstinate, and even fierce, when contradicted, 
as most men are who have built up their opini- 
ons for themselves. He used with much taste 
the common pithy saws and happy sayings of 
his country, and invigorated his eloquence by apt 
quotations from old songs or ballads. He courted 
controversy, and it was to this period that Mur- 
doch, the accomplished mechanic, referred, when 
he told me that he once heard Burns haranguing his 
fellow-peasants on religion at the door of a change- 
house, and so unacceptable were his remarks that 
some old men hissed him away. Nor must it be 
supposed that, even when listened to, he was always 
victorious. — " Burns, sir," said one of his old oppo- 
nents, " was a 'cute chield and a witty, but he didna 
half like to have my harrow coming owre his new- 
fangled notions." 

The early companions of the Poet were men 
above the common mark. Smith, to whom he ad- 
dresses some of his finest poetic epistles, was a per- 



60 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

son of taste and sagacity ; David Sillar, a good 
scholar, and something of a poet ; Ranken, an out- 
spoken, ready-witted man, and a little of a scoffer; 
Lapraik lived at a distance — he had written at least 
one song worthy of notice. Hamilton was open- 
hearted and open-handed, and of a good family ; 
Aikin seems to have abounded in good sense and 
good feeling; Bailantyne was much of a gentle- 
man ; Parker, kind and generous ; Mackenzie, of 
Irvine, a skilful surgeon and a good scholar, who 
introduced the Poet to Dugald Stewart, Whitefoord, 
Erskine, and Blair ; — but his chief comrade and 
confidant was his brother Gilbert, who at an early 
age distinguished himself for sense and discernment. 
" Gilbert," says Mackenzie, " partook more of the 
manner and appearance of the father, and Robert of 
the mother. In the first interview I had with him 
at Lochlea, he was frank, modest, well informed, and 
communicative. The Poet seemed distant, suspi- 
cious, and without any wish to interest or please. 
He kept himself very silent in a dark corner of the 
room, and before he took any part in conversation, 
I frequently observed him scrutinizing me, while I 
conversed with his father and his brother. From 
the period of which I speak, I took a lively interest 
in Robert Burns. Even then his conversation was 
rich in well chosen figures, animated and energetic. 
Indeed, I have always thought that no person 
could have a just idea of the extent of Burns' 
talents, who had not heard him converse. His dis- 
crimination of character was greatly beyond that 
of any person I ever knew, and I have often ob- 
served to him that it seemed to be intuitive. I 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 61 

seldom ever knew him make a false estimate of 
character, when he formed the opinion from his own 
observation." 

The sketch drawn by Sillar is of another kind : — 
" Robert Burns was some time in the parish of Tar- 
bolton, prior to my acquaintance with him. His 
social disposition easily procured him acquaintance ; 
but a certain satirical seasoning with which he and 
all poetical geniuses are in some degree influenced, 
while it set the rustic circle in a roar, was not unac- 
companied with suspicious fear. I recollect hearing 
his neighbours observe he had a great deal to say for 
himself, and that they suspected his principles. He 
wore the only tied hair in the parish ; and in the 
church his plaid, which was of a particular colour 
(I think fillemot), he wrapped in a peculiar manner 
round his shoulders. These surmises and his ex- 
terior made me solicitous of his acquaintance. I 
was introduced by Gilbert not only to his brother, 
but to the whole of that family, where, in a short 
time, I became a frequent, and, I believe, not un- 
welcome visitant. After the commencement of my 
acquaintance with the bard, we frequently met upon 
Sundays at church; when, between sermons, instead 
of going with our friends or lasses to the inn, we 
often took a walk in the fields. In these walks, I 
have often been struck with his facility in addressing 
the fair sex ; and many times when I have been 
bashfully anxious how to express myself, he would 
have entered into conversation with them with the 
greatest ease and freedom ; and it was generally a 
death-blow to our conversation, however agreeable, 
to meet a female acquaintance. Some of the few 



62 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

opportunities of a noontide walk that a country life 
allows her laborious sons, he spent on the banks of 
the river, or in the woods in the neighbourhood of 
Stair. Some book or other he always carried and 
read when not otherwise employed ; it was likewise 
his custom to read at table." 

A third hand completes the sketch :« — " Though 
Burns," says Professor Walker, " was still unknown 
as a Poet, he already numbered several clergymen 
among his acquaintance : one of these communicated 
to me a circumstance which conveyed more forcibly 
than many words, an idea of the impression made 
upon his mind by the powers of the Poet. This 
gentleman had repeatedly met Burns in company, 
when the acuteness and originality displayed by the 
latter, the depth of his discernment, the force of his 
expressions, and the authoritative energy of his 
understanding, had created in the former a sense of 
his power, of the extent of which he was uncon- 
scious till revealed to him by accident. The second 
time that he appeared in the pulpit, he came with an 
assured and tranquil mind ; and though a few per- 
sons of education were present, he advanced some 
length in the service, with his confidence and self- 
possession unimpaired. But when he observed Burns 
who was of a different parish, unexpectedly enter the 
church, he was instantly affected with a tremour and 
embarrassment which apprized him of the impres- 
sion his mind, unknown to itself, had previously 
received." 

Authorities such as these confute the inconsiderate 
assertions of Heron, respecting the " opening cha- 
racter" of the Poet. We have no proof that he 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 63 

became discontented in early life with the humble 
labours to which he saw himself confined, and with 
the poor subsistence he was able to earn by them — 
that he could not help looking upon the rich and 
great whom he saw around, with an emotion between 
envy and contempt, as if something had still whis- 
pered to his heart that there was injustice in the 
external inequality between his fate and theirs. 
The early injuries of fortune oppressed him at times ; 
but, till he was thirty years' old, his spirit was buoy- 
ant and unbroken, and he looked with an unclouded 
brow on the world around him. 

In "the Holy Fair," the Poet, accidentally or pur- 
posely, rose out of the lower regions of personal in- 
vective into the purer air of true poetry, and gave 
us a picture of singular breadth and beauty. The 
aim of the poem is chiefly to reprehend, by means of 
wit and humour, those almost indecent festivities 
which, in many western parishes, accompany the 
administration of the sacrament. Instead of preach- 
ing to the staid and the pious under the roof of the 
kirk, the scene is transferred to the open church- 
yard, where a tent or pulpit is erected for the 
preachers ; while, all around, the j^eople of the parish 
seat themselves on graves or grave-stones, decor- 
ously to look and listen. In the earlier days of the 
church, when men were more in earnest, * there is 
no doubt that a scene such as this in the open air 
was attended with nothing of an objectionable nature ; 
nay, at present, the thoughtful and the serious con- 
template it as something edifying and impressive ; 
but with the pious and the orderly come swarms of 
the idle and the profligate ; bevies of lads and lasses 



64 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

keep moving about in search of better seats or finer 
points of view, and tiring, or affecting to tire, of the 
sermon, which is sometimes of the longest, retire to 
a neighbouring change-house, or to the open door of 
an ale-booth, where, as they empty the glass, they 
may hear the voice of the preacher. There is no 
doubt that these " Holy Fairs," as they were scofnngly 
called, afforded scenes more than justifying serious 
as well as sarcastic reproof. In the poem, Burns 
here and there shews he had been reading other poets. 
His allegorical personages are partly copied from 
Fergusson, and the hares that hirpled down the furs 
did the same for Montgomery. "The farcical scene 
the Poet there describes," says Gilbert, " was often 
a favourite field for his observation, and most of the 
incidents he mentions had actually passed before 
his eyes." 

Burns now openly took upon himself the name of 
Poet ; he not only wrote it in his books, but wrought 
it into his rhymes, and began to entertain hopes of 
distinction in the realms of song. But nothing, 
perhaps, marks the character of the man more than 
the alteration which he made in his own name. He 
had little relish for by-gone things ; there are few 
gazings back at periods of honour or of woes in all' 
his strains. The name he had hitherto borne was of 
old standing, the Poet sat in judgment upon it, con- 
cluded that it had a barbarous sound, and threw 
away Burness — a name two syllables long, and 
seven centuries old, and adopted that of Burns in 
its stead. Had his father been alive, this might not 
have happened. On the 20th of March, 1786, he 
says to one of his Correspondents : — " I hope some 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 65 

time before we hear the gouk, to have the pleasure 
of seeing you at Kilmarnock, when I intend having 
a gill between us in a mutchkin stoup, which will be 
a great comfort and consolation to, dear Sir, your 
humble servant, Robert Burness. , ' — This is the 
latest time that I find his original name in his own 
hand-writing ; it is plain that, up to this period, he 
imagined he had achieved nothing under that of his 
father deserving to live. On the 20th of April he 
wrote his name " Burns" in a letter enclosing, to 
his friend Kennedy, that beautiful poem the " Moun- 
tain Daisy," headed " The Gowan." This was with 
the Poet a season of changes. 

Burns commenced emblazoning his altered name 
with all that is bright and lasting in verse. From 
the day that he entered upon Mossgiel with the 
resolution of becoming rich, till the dark hour on 
which he quitted it, reduced well nigh to beggary, he 
continued to pour forth poem after poem, and song 
succeeding song, with a variety and rapidity truly 
wonderful. His best poems are the offspring of 
those four unfortunate years, and the history of each 
has something in it of the curious or the romantic. 
" The Death and dying words of Poor Mailie," 
and, better still, " Poor Mailie's Elegy," suggested 
to him probably by " The Ewie wi' the crooked horn ' 
of Skinner, were written before the death of his 
father — at least the former was. The Poet had, it 
seems, bought a ewe with two lambs from a neigh- 
bour, and tethered her in a field at Lochlea. " He 
and I," says Gilbert, " were going out with our 
teams, and our two younger brothers to drive for us, 
at mid-day, when Hugh Wilson, a curious-looking 

VOL. i. f 



66 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

awkward boy, clad in plaiding, came to us with 
much anxiety in his face, with the information that 
the ewe had entangled herself in the tether, and 
was lying in the ditch." 

The " Elegy" has much of the Poet's latter free- 
dom and force. He had caressed this four-footed 
favourite till she followed at his heels like a dog: — 

" Through a' the town she trotted by him, 
A lang half mile she could descry him, 
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him, 

She ran wi' speed ; 
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er came nigh him. 
Than Mailie dead." 

One of the rejected verses ought to be remem- 
bered in Kyle, were it but for the honour done to 
the lambs of Fairlee : — 

" She was nae get o' runted rams, 
Wi' woo like goats, an' legs like trams, 
She was the flower o' Fairlee lambs, 
Of famous breed ; 
Now Robin greetin chews the hams 
O' Mailie dead." 

The image in the two last lines is out of harmony 
with the sentiment of the poem ; and Burns, whose 
taste was born with him, omitted the verse in con- 
sequence. 

The " Epistle to David Sillar" was written some 
time in the summer of 1784. Burns was in the 
habit of composing verse at the plough or the har- 
rows : — he turned it over in his mind for several 
days, and when he had polished it to his satisfac- 
tion, or found a moment's leisure, he committed it 
to paper. Gilbert relates that he was weeding with 
Robert in the kaleyard, when he repeated the 
principal part of the Epistle. The first idea of his 
becoming an author was then started. " I was much 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 67 

pleased,'' says his brother, " with the Epistle, and 
said to him that I was of opinion it would bear being 
printed, and that it would be well received by people 
of taste : that I thought it at least equal, if not 
superior, to many of Allan Ramsay's epistles, and 
that the merit of these, and much other Scotch 
poetry, seemed to consist principally in the knack 
of the expression ; but here there was a train of 
interesting sentiment, and the Scotticism of the 
language scarcely seemed affected, but appeared to 
be the natural language of the poet ; that, besides, 
there was certainly some novelty in a poet pointing 
out the consolations that were in store for him when 
he should go a-begging. Robert seemed pleased 
with my criticism, and we talked of sending it to 
some magazine." 

If we credit the accuracy of the verse, and the 
memory of Gilbert, the Poet was, in 1784, ac- 
quainted with Jean Armour, and had become her ad- 
mirer and lover. But it is more likely that the verse 
in which her name occurs was added afterwards, un- 
less we believe that he had made an inroad among 
the " Mauchline belles," almost as soon as he went 
to Mossgiel. His Epistles are of high merit. They 
are perhaps the finest compositions of the kind in 
the language — airy, elegant, and philosophic — with 
more nature than Prior's Epistle to " Fletwood 
Shepherd," and equal power of illustration. He 
had already begun to take those serious looks at 
human life of which his poems are full ; nor did he 
fail to perceive how unequally the gifts of fortune, 
as well as those of genius, are divided. 
f 2 



68 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

<< Its hardly in a body's power 

To keep at times from being sour, 

To see how things are shared ; 
How best o' chiels are whiles in want, 
While coofs on countless thousands rant, 

Andkenna how to wair't." 

He lived long enough to think more deeply and 
more darkly on this topic. At present the world was 
brightening before him — the mist seemed rolling 
away from his path, and he felt disposed to enjoy 
life without murmuring. 

The epistolary form was a favourite way with 
Burns of giving air to his opinions and feelings ; 
when he had doubts of fame — was o'ermastered with 
his passions — or disgusted with 

" The tricks of knaves and fash of fools.'' 

he lifted the pen and indited an epistle to a friend, 
and poured out the loves, the cares, the sorrows, the 
joys, the hopes, and fears of the passing moment. 
It is truly wonderful with what ease and felicity — 
nay, with what elegance, he twines the garlands of 
his fancy round a barren topic. Much of his history 
may be sought for in these compositions. In his 
Epistle to Smith, he alludes to his Poems : in- 
timates that he had thoughts of printing them, pre- 
tends to take alarm at the sight of moths revelling 
on the pages of authors : — 

" Far seen in Greek, deep men of letters," 

and philosophically exclaims as well as poetically — 

<< Then farewell hopes of laurel boughs 
To garland my poetic brows : 
Henceforth I'll rove where busy ploughs 

Are whistling thrang. 
And teach the lonely heights and howes 
]\ly rustic sang." 

Burns takes a loftier view of the matter in his 
epistle to Lapraik, written on the first of April, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 69 

17S5. He intimates that he is no poet in the high 
acceptation of the word ; but a rhymer, who deals 
in homely words, and has no pretence to learning. 
He pulls himself down, but he refuses to let any 
one else up ; he prefers a spark of nature's fire to 
all the artificial heat of education, and speaks con- 
temptuously of " critic folk," and learned judges. 

" What's a' your jargon o' your schools, 
Your Latin names for horns and stools ? 
If honest Nature made you fools 

What sairs your grammars ? 
Ye'd better ta'en up spades and shools, 

Or knappin-hammers. 

" A set o' dull, conceited hashes, 

Confuse their brains in College classes, 
They gang in stirks, and come out asses, 

Plain truth to speak : 
And syne they think to climb Parnassus 

By dint o' Greek." 

In a second epistle to the same person, Burns 
claims for " the ragged followers of the Nine" a life 
of immortal light, and presents to their contemplation 
the sordid sons of Mammon suffering under the 
transmigration of souls. 

*< Though here they scrape, and squeeze, and growl, 
Their worthless neivefu' of a soul 
May in some future carcase howl, 

The forest's fright : 
Or in some day-detesting owl 

May shun the light."' 

In a poetic letter to another of his companions 
while exulting in the idea of making the rivers and 
rivulets of Kyle flow bright in future song, he lets 
us into the secret of his own mode of musing : — 

»« The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, 
Till by himsel' he learned to wander 
Adown some trotting burn's meander, 

An' no think lang ! 
O ! sweet to stray, an' pensive ponder 

A heartfelt sang !" 



70 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Of these poems we are informed that the first 
epistle to John Lapraik was written in consequence 
of a clever song which that indifferent rhymer 
had made under the inspiration of adversity. The 
epistle to Ranken carries its own explanation with 
it : we may allow it to remain half concealed in the 
thin mist of allegory. The epistle to Smith is per- 
haps the very best of all these compositions : the 
singular ease of the verse ; the moral dignity of one 
passage ; the wit and humour of a second ; the ele- 
gance of compliment in a third ; and the life which 
animates the whole, must he felt by the most ordi- 
nary mind. One of the verses was frequent on the 
lips of Byron during the darkening down of his 
own day : 

" When ance life's day draws near the gloamin, 
Then farewell vacant, careless roamin, 
And farewell cheerful tankards foamin, 

An' social noise ; 
And farewell, dear deluding woman, 

The joy of joys." 

In the winter of 1785, Burns composed his " Ad- 
dress to the Deil." His sable majesty is familiar to 
the imagination of every Scottish peasant, and there 
are few wild glens in which he has not been heard 
or seen. The Satan of Milton was a favourite with 
the Poet ; he admired his fortitude in enduring 
what could not be remedied, and pitied a noble and 
exalted mind in ruins. This feeling he united to 
the traditions of shepherds and husbandmen, and 
treated the Evil Spirit with much of the respect due 
to fallen royalty. " It was, I think," says Gilbert, 
" in the winter, as we were going together with 
carts for coal to the family fire, and I could* yet 
point out the particular spot^ that the author first 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 71 

repeated to me the 'Address to the Deil.' " That 
Burns was now acquainted with Jean Armour # the 
variations of this poem sufficiently prove : — 

" Lang syne, in Eden's happy scene, 

When strappin' Adam's days were green, 
And Eve was like my bonny Jean, 
My dearest part, 
A dancing, sweet, young, handsome quean, 
Wi : guileless heart." 

The evil spirit of religious controversy was now 
fairly out of him : he makes no allusions, though 
the temptation was great, to the clergy, but treats 
the subject with natural truth and vigour. All 
northern natures sympathize in the following fine 
stanza : — 

" I've heard my reverend graunie say 
In lanely glens ye like to stray, 
Or where auld ruined castles gray 

Xod to the moon, 
Ye fright the nightly wanderer's way 

Wi' eldritch croon.'" 

There is something of serious jocularity in the verse 
which expresses the Poet's fears and hopes of 
futurity : — 

(< An' now auld Cloots, I ken yere thinkin' 
A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin', 
Some luckless hour will send him linkin' 
To your black pit ; 
But faith ! he'll turn a corner, jinkin", 
And cheat you yet." 

In the contemplated repentance of Satan, Burns 
seems to hint at universal redemption — a finishing 
touch of fine and unexpected tenderness. 

The " Halloween" is a happy mixture of the dra- 
matic and the descriptive, and bears the impress of 
the manners, customs, and superstitions of the people. 
We see the scene, and are made familiar with the 
actors ; we not only see them busied in the mys- 



72 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

teries of the night, but we hear their remarks ; nor 
can we refrain from accompanying them on their 
solitary and perilous errands to " winnow wechts of 
naething, sow hemp-seed, pull kale-stocks, eat ap- 
ples at the glass ;" or, more romantic still, " wet the 
left sleeve of the shirt where three lairds' lands meet 
at a burn." The whole poem hovers between the 
serious and the ludicrous : in delineating the super- 
stitious beliefs and mysterious acts of the evening, 
Burns keeps his own opinion to himself. The 
scene is laid in the last night of harvest, as the name 
implies, at a husbandman's fireside, whose corn is 
gathered into the stack-yard and the barn ; and the 
hands which aided in the labour are met — 

" To burn their nits, and pou their stocks, 
An' haud their Halloween." 

They seem not unaware that while they are merry, 
or looking into futurity, fairies are dancing on Cassi- 
lis-Downans, and witches are mounted on their "rag- 
weed nags/' hurrying to some wild rendezvous, or 
concerting with the author of mischief fresh woes for 
man. It is the most equal of all the Poet's com- 
positions. 

A singular poem, and in its nature personal, was 
also the offspring of the same year. This is " Death 
and Doctor Hornbook." The hero of the piece was 
John Wilson, schoolmaster of the parish of Tar- 
bolton : a person of blameless life, fond of argument, 
opinionative, and obstinate. At a mason-meeting, 
it seems he provoked the Poet by questioning some 
of his positions in a speech stuffed with Latin phrases 
and allusions to pharmacy. The future satire 
dawned on Burns at the moment, for he exclaimed 



B 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 73 

twice, " Sit down, Doctor Hornbook!" On his way 
home he seated himself on the parapet of a bridge 
near " Willie's Mill, 5 ' and in the moonlight began 
to reflect on what had passed. It then occurred to 
him that Wilson had added to the moderate income 
of his school the profit arising from the sale of a few 
common medicines ; this suggested an interview with 
" Death," and all the ironical commendations of the 
Dominie which followed. He composed the poem 
on his perilous seat, and when he had done, fell 
asleep ; he was awakened by the rising sun, and, on 
going home, committed it to paper. It exhibits a 
singular union of fancy and humour ; the attention 
is arrested at once by the ludicrous difficulty felt in 
counting the horns of the moon, and we expect 
something to happen when his shadowy majesty 
comes upon the stage, relates his experience in 
" nicking the thread and choking the breath," and 
laments how his scythe and dart are rendered useless 
by the skill of Dr. Hornbook. On the appearance 
of the poem, Wilson found the laugh of Kyle too 
much for him — 

" The weans held out their fingers laughin'." 

So he removed to Glasgow^ where he engaged with 
success in other pursuits. He lives, but loves no 
one the better, it is averred, for naming the name of 
the Poet, or making any allusion to the poem. 
Burns repeated the satire to his brother during the 
afternoon of the day on which it was composed. " I 
was holding the plough," said Gilbert, " and Robert 
was letting w r ater off the field beside me." 

The patriotic feelings of the Bard were touched 
when he took up the song of " Scotch Drink" against 



74 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the government of the day, and uttered his " Earnest 
cry and prayer to the Scottish representatives in the 
House of Commons. " Yet bitter as he sometimes is, 
and overflowing with humorous satire, these poems 
abound with natural and noble images ; nay, he 
scolds himself into a pleasant mood, and scatters 
praise on the " chosen Five-and-Forty," with much 
skill and discrimination. His praise of whiskey is 
strangely mingled with sadness : 

" Food fills the wame and keeps us livin' ; 
Though life's a gift no worth receivin' 
When heavy dragged wi' pine an' grievin', 

But, oil'd by thee, 
The wheels o' life gae down hill scrievin', 
Wi' rattlin' glee. 

" Thou clears the head o' doited Lear, 
Thou cheers the heart o' droopin' Care, 
Thou strings the nerves o' Labour sair, 

At's weary toil; 
Thou even brightens dark Despair 

Wi' gloomy smile." 

A country forge with a blazing fire, an anxious 
blacksmith, and a welding heat, will rise to the 
fancy readily on reading these inimitable stanzas : — 

" W T hen Vulcan gies his bellows breath, 
And ploughmen gather wi' their graith, 
O rare to see thee fizz and freath 

I' the luggit caup, 
Then Bur new in comes on like death 
At every chap. 

«' Nae mercy then for aim or steel, 
The brawnie, bainie ploughman chiel 
Brings hard owrehip, wi' sturdy wheel, 

The strong forehammer, 
Till block an' study ring an' reel 

Wi' dinsome clamour." 

Nor are there wanting stanzas of a more solemn kind 
to bring trembling to our mirth. The Scotsman 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 75 

dying on a battle-field with the sound of victory in 
his ear, is a noble picture : — 

" Nae cauld faint-hearted doubtings tease him, 
Death comes !— \\i fearless eye he sees him, 
Wi' bloody hand a welcome gies him, 

An' when he fa's 
His latest draught o' breathin' lea'es him 

In faint huzzas." 

He steps at once from the serious to the comic : his 
description of Mither Scotland sitting on her moun- 
tain throne, her diadem a little awry, her eyes reeling, 
and the heather below becoming moist during her 
prolonged libations, is equally humorous and ir- 
reverent. Those w r ho may suspect that all this 
singing about liquor arose from a love of it, will be 
glad to hear that when Nanse Tinnoch was told how 
Burns proposed to toast the Scotch members in her 
house " nine times a week," she exclaimed, " Him 
drink in my house ! I hardly ken the colour o' his 
coin/' 

The year 1785 was a harvest season of verse 
with Burns. Some of his poems he hesitated for a 
while to make public ; others he copied, and scattered 
amongst his friends. Of these one of the most re- 
markable is " The Jolly Beggars." This drama, 
which I cannot help considering the most varied 
and characteristic of the Poet's works, was unknown, 
save to some west country acquaintances, till after 
his death, when it came unexpectedly out. The 
opening seems uttered by another muse than Coila 
— the sound is of the elder days of verse ; but the 
moment the curtain draws up and shews the actors, 
the spirit of Burns appears kindling and animating 
all. It is impossible to deny his presence ; — 



76 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" First neist the fire in auld red rags 
Ane sat, weel braced wi' mealy bags, 

And knapsack a' in order; 
His doxy lay within his arm, 
Wi* usquebae an' blankets warm, 
She blinkit on her sodger. 
tl And aye he gied the tosie drab 
The tither skelpin kiss, 
While she held up her greedy gab 

Just like an amous dish, 
Ilk smack still, did crack still, 

Like to a cadger's whup, 
While staggering and swaggering 
He roared this ditty up." 

The scene of this rustic drama lies in Mauchline, 
and the actors are strolling vagrants, who having 
acquired meal and money by begging, pilfering, and 
sleight-of-hand, assemble in Posie Nansie's to " toom 
their pocks and pawn their duds," and 

" Gie ae night's discharge to care," 

over the gill-stoup and the quaigh. They hold a 
sort of Beggars' Saturday-night — sing songs, utter 
sentiments, and lay down the loose laws of the 
various classes they represent. The characters are 
numerous. The maimed soldier, who bore scars 
both for Scotland and for love ; and his doxy, warm 
with blankets and usquebaugh, who in her youth 
forsook the sword for the sake of the church, but 
returned to the drum when age brought reflection. 
The merry-andrew, who would venture his neck for 
liquor, who held love to be the half of his craft, and 
yet was a fool still ; — the highland dame who had 
lightened many a purse — been ducked in many a 
well : who, with a countryman, had laid the land 
under contribution from Tweed to Spey, and was 
only hindered from making a foray farther south by 
the interposition of the " waefu' woodie !" The 
pigmy scraper wi' his fiddle ; — the sturdy tinker, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 77 

who had " travelled round all Christian ground" in 
his vocation, and swore by all was swearing worth 
whenever he was moved ; — and, last of all, the 
" wight of Homer's craft," who, though lame of 
a foot, had three wives, and could allure the 
people round him in crowds when he sung of 
love and country revelry. All these, and more, 
sing, and shout, and talk and act in character ! 
and unite in giving effect to the chorus of a song 
which claims, for the jovial ragged ring, exemp- 
tion from the cares which weigh down the sedate 
and the orderly, and a happiness which refuses 
to wait on the train-attended carriage, or on the 
sober bed of matrimony. The curtain drops as they 
all shout, 

" A fig for those by law protected, 
Liberty's a glorious feast, 
Courts for cowards were erected, 
Churches built to please the priest." 

There is nothing in the language which, for life 
and character, approaches this singular " Cantata." 
The Beggar's Opera is a burial compared to it ; 
it bears some resemblance to the Wallenstein's 
Camp of Schiller, as translated by Lord Francis 
Egerton ; the same variety, and the same licence of 
action and speech distinguish both, 

The origin of the Cantata is worth relating. 
Mauchline ale and Mauchline maidens frequently 
brought the Poet from Mossgiel, which lies but some 
half-a-mile distant. He frequented the public-house 
of John Dow on those occasions, in the immediate 
vicinity of the scene of " The Jolly Beggars." The 
house of Posie Nansie, alias Agnes Gibson, stands 
opposite nearly to the church-yard gate. One night 



78 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

it happened that James Smith of Mauchline, and 
Burns, on their way up the street, heard the sound 
of " meikle fun and jokin' " in Nansie's hostelry, 
and saw lights streaming from the fractured windows. 
On entering, they found a company of wandering 
mendicants enjoying themselves over the dear Keil- 
bagie. They were welcomed with cheers,_ entered 
into the humours of the scene, called for more liquor, 
and the noise and fun grew fast and furious. Burns 
paid much attention to an old soldier with a " wooden 
arm and leg," whose drollery was unbounded. In a 
few days he rough- wrote the Cantata, and shewed it 
amongst his friends. He gave the only copy now 
known to be in existence to David Woodburn ; it 
was lately in the hands of Thomas Stewart, of 
Greenock. 

It is probable that the Poet found it an easier task 
to delineate the characters and indite the songs of 
the Cantata than to endow the " Mouse " and the 
" Daisy " with sentiments of terror and of pity. A 
common ploughman would have stamped his tacketed 
shoe upon the one, saying " down, vermin!" or 
helped the furrow over upon the other, pronouncing 
it a weed. With far other feelings the ploughman 
of Mossgiel saw the ruin of the one, and the destruc- 
tion of the other. " The verses to the Mouse and 
the Mountain Daisy," says Gilbert, " were com- 
posed on the occasions, and while the author was 
holding the plough. I could point out the particu- 
lar spot where each was composed. Holding the 
plough was a favourite situation with Robert for 
poetic compositions, and some of his best verses 
were produced while he was at that exercise. Se- 



1 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 79 

veral of the poems were written for the purpose of 
brin<rin<y forward some favourite sentiment of the 
author.'' ^V hen the coulter passed through the nest 
of leaves and stubble, the Poet assured the timid 
mouse, as it fled in terror, that the best laid schemes 
of men were frustated, as well as those of mice ; and 
that though its house was laid in ruins, and winter 
afforded no materials for constructing a new one, still 
its lot was bliss compared with his own. It was 
touched only with the passing, while he was affected 
with the past — felt the present, and dreaded the 
future. A similar train of sentiment runs through 
the " Daisy :" the Poet buries its opening bloom 
with the plough, and grieves that he cannot save a 
thing so lovely ; nay, lest the flower should mistake 
the crash of the cruel coulter for the pressure of 
some gentler thing, he exclaims, with equal tender- 
ness and beauty : — 

<< Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet, 
The bonnie lark, companion meet, 
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet 

Wi' spreckled breast, 
When upward springing blythe to greet 

The purpling east." 

He suddenly turns from the fate of the flower to his 
own, and draws the same dark conclusions as he did 
in the " Mouse;" 

" Even thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, 
That fate is thine no distant date, 
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate 

Full on thy bloom ; 
Till, crush'd beneath the furrow's weight, 

Shall be thy doom." 

His poetry abounds in melancholy predictions about 
himself; he had visions of beauty and of grandeur, 
but along with them came darker visions : w r ant and 
ruin, sorrow and neglect, death and the grave. The 



80 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

immortality conferred on this humble flower escaped 
not the observation of Wordsworth as he passed, in 
1833, through the " Land of Burns." 

s< Myriads of Daisies have shone forth in flower 
Near the lark's nest, and in their natural hour 
Have passed away less happy than the One 
That by the unwilling ploughshare died to prove 
The tender charm of poetry and love." 

The fine poem of " Man was made to Mourn " 
was composed by Burns for the purpose of bringing 
forward a favourite sentiment. — " He used to re- 
mark to me," says Gilbert, " that he could not well 
conceive a more mortifying picture of human life 
than a man seeking work. In casting about in his 
mind how this sentiment might be illustrated, the 
elegy of ' Man was made to Mourn ' was com- 
posed." The germ of the composition may be found 
in " The Life and Age of Man," which the Poet's 
mother was wont to sing to his grand-uncle. The 
same sentiment is corrmion to both ; the same form 
of expression, and the same words may be traced in 
every verse ; " Man is made to mourn," is the in- 
troductory exclamation of the old ; " Man was made 
to mourn," is the chorus of the new. Nor is the 
earlier poem without pathos and force ; the periods 
of man's life are compared to the months of the 
year : the child is born in January, flourishes in 
July, and dies in December : the parallel is well 
maintained : — 

" Then cometh May, gallant and gay, 
W T hen fragrant flowers do thrive, 
The child is then become a man, 
Of age twentie-and-five. 
(c December fell, both sharp and snell, 
Makes flowers creep to the ground; 
Then man's threescore, both sick and sore, 
No soundness in him found.' ' 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 81 

To make each month of the year correspond with five 
years of a man's life, the moralizing bard of the year 
sixteen hundred and fifty-three extinguished the 
faculties of man at sixty ; the bard of seventeen 
hundred and eighty-six says nothing of life's dura- 
tion, but sings the sorrows of him who, overwrought 
and abject, has to beg leave to toil from a lordly 
fellow- worm, who scorns his poor petition, and turns 
him over to idleness and woe. The question which 
the Poet asks is one not easily answered by the op- 
pressor : — 

r « If I'm design'd yon lordling's slave, 

By Nature's law designed, 
Why was an independent wish 

E'er planted in my mind ? 
If not, why am I subject to 

His cruelty or scorn ? 
Or why has man the will and power 

To make his fellow mourn ?" 

The sage of the banks of Ayr intimates to the 
indignant bard that a future state, where the great 
and the wealthy cease from troubling, is the only 
hope and refuge of those — " who weary laden 
mourn." His own desolate condition and dreary 
prospects raised those darksome ideas. 

In the truly noble poem of the " Vision " Burns 
imagines himself seated, in a winter night, by his 
fire, which burns reluctantly ; wearied with the flail, 
he proceeds to muse on wasted time. In his sight 
the scene is dark enough ; he has spent the prime of 
youth in making rhymes for fools to sing ; he has 
neglected advice which would have placed him at 
the head of a market ; and now, " half-mad, half- 
fed, half-sarket," he is sitting undistinguished and 
poor. Stung with these reflections, he starts up, 

VOL. I, g 



82 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

and is about to swear to refrain rhyme till his latest 
breath, when the door opens, the fire flames brighter, 
and a strange and lovely lady comes blushing to his 
side : — 

" Green, slender, leaf-clad holly boughs, 
Were twisted graceful round her brows ; 
I took her for some Scottish muse 
By that same token, 
And come to stop those reckless vows 

Wou'd soon been broken." 

His surmise was just : she was the Muse of Kyle — 
his own inspirer ; nay, she had a handsome leg like 
his Mauchline Jean, and looked the express image 
of his own mind : — 

" A hair-brained, sentimental trace, 
Was strongly marked in her face, 
A wildly witty rustic grace 

Shone full upon her ; 
Her eye-even turned on empty space, 

Beam'd keen with honour." 

On her mantle were pictured the district and heroes 
of Kyle ; but she came to speak, and not to be looked 
at. She claimed Burns for her own bard ; told him 
to lament his luckless lot no longer ; that he was 
there to fulfil the social plan of Nature, and form a 
not unimportant link in the great chain of being. 
She was intimate with all his outgoings. Her words 
are useful to the biographer ; they exhibit the Poet 
in his studious moods : — 

* < I saw thee seek the sounding shore, 
Delighted with the dashing roar, 
Or when the North his fleecy store 

Drove through the sky ; 
I saw grim Nature's visage hoar 

Struck thy young eye." 

She observed, too, that beauty agitated his frame — 
communicated to his tongue words of persuasion and 
grace, and inspired him with musical and voluntary 
numbers : she saw more — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 83 

•« I saw thy pulses maddening play 
Wild send thee Pleasure's devious way, 
Misled by Fancy's meteor ray, 

By passion driven — 
But yet the light that led astray 

Was light from heaven." 

His visitor assured him that the wealth of Potosi, 
or the regard of monarchs, could not at all equal the 
pleasure he would feel as a rustic poet, and en- 
treated him to fan the tuneful flame, preserve his 
dignity, and trust for protection to the universal 
plan of the Creator : — 

« f * And wear thou this/ she solemn said, 
And bound the holly round my head ; 
The polish'd leaves and berries red 

Did rustling play, 
And like a passing thought she fled 
In light away." 

Frequent bursts of religious feeling and a fine 
spirit of morality, are visible in much that Burns 
wrote ; yet only one of his poems is expressly dedi- 
cated to devotion — " The Cotter's Saturday Night." 
The origin of this noble strain is related by his 
brother : — " Robert had frequently remarked to me 
that he thought there was something peculiarly 
venerable in the phrase, * Let us worship God,' 
used by a decent sober head of a family introducing 
family worship. The hint of the plan and title of the 
poem were taken from Fergusson's * Farmer's Ingle/ 
When Robert had not some pleasure in view, in 
which I was not thought fit to participate, we used 
frequently to walk together when the weather was 
favourable on the Sunday afternoon, those precious 
breathing times to the labouring part of the com- 
munity, and enjoyed such Sundays as would make 
us regret to see their number abridged. It was in 



84 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

one of these walks that I first had the pleasure of 
hearing the Author repeat the ' Cotter's Saturday 
Night.' " 

The poem is a picture of cottage devotion, by a 
hand more solicitous about accuracy than effect ; for 
no one knew better than Burns that invention could 
not heighten, nor art embellish a scene in which man 
holds intercourse with heaven. His natural good 
taste told him that his work-day burning impet- 
uosity of language and intrepid freedom of illustra- 
tion were unsuitable here ; he calmed down his style 
into an earnest and touching simplicity, which has 
been mistaken by critics for tameness ; but the 
strength of the poem is proved by the numerous and 
beautiful images, all of a devotional character, which 
it impresses on the mind. Religion is the leading 
feature of the whole ; but love in its virgin state, 
and patriotism in its purity, mingle with it, and give 
a gentle tinge, rather than a decided colour, to the 
performance. The scene is peculiar to Scotland. 
With what natural art the Poet introduces us to 
the Cotter, and to his happy home, and gradually- 
prepares us, by a succession of solemn images, for 
the opening of the Bible and the pouring out of 
prayer ! 

The winter day is darkening into night, the 
blackening trains of crows seek the pine-tree tops, 
and the toil-worn cotter lays together his spades 
and hoes, and, " hoping the morn in ease and rest 
to spend," walks homewards over the moor : — 

"At length his lonely cot appears in view, 
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 
The expectant wee-things todlin' stacher through, 
To meet their dad wi' flichterin' noise an' glee, 
His wee bit ingle blinkin bonnilie, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 85 

His clean hearth stane, his thrifty wifie's smile, 

The lisping infant prattling on his knee, 
Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, 
And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil." 

Presently the elder children, released by Saturday 
night from their weekly servitude among the neigh- 
bouring farmers, come " drapping in ;" and Jenny, 
their eldest hope, now woman grown, shews a " braw 
new gown," or puts her wages into her parents' 
hands, to aid them, should they require it. Amid 
them the anxious mother sits, and with her needle 
and shears, 

«* Gaurs auld claes look amaist as weel as new, 
The father mixes all with admonition due." 

The admonition of this good man to his children is, 
to be obedient to those above them ; to mind their 
labours, nor be idle when unobserved ; and chiefly 
to fear the Lord, and duly, morn and night, implore 
his aid and counsel. While this is going on, a gentle 
rap is heard at the door, and a strappan youth, who 
11 takes the mother's e'e," is introduced by Jenny as 
a neighbour lad, who, among other things, had un- 
dertaken to see her safely home. The visit is well 
taken, for he is neither wild nor worthless, but come 
of honest parents, and is, moreover, blate and bash- 
ful, and for inward joy can scarce behave himself. 
The mother knows well what makes him so grave ; 
the father converses about horses and ploughs, 
while the supper-table is spread, and milk from her 
only cow, and a " well-hained cheese," of a peculiar 
flavour, and a twelvemonth old " sin' lint was in 
the bell," are placed by the frugal and happy mother 
before the lothful stranger. 



86 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 



" The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face 
They round the ingle form a circle wide, 
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, 

The big ha' bible, ance his father's pride : 
His bonnet reverently is laid aside, 

His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; 
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, 
He wales a portion with judicious care, 
And * let us worship God,' he says with solemn air." 

The canker-tooth of the most envious criticism 
cannot well fasten on a work in every respect so per- 
fect ; nor, in expatiating upon it, are we going out 
of the direct line of biography : it is known to be, in 
part, a picture of the household of William Burness. 
From pictures of national manners and sentiment we 
must turn to matters more personal. 

Of the maidens of Kyle, who contributed by their 
charms of mind or person to the witchery of the love 
songs of Burns, I can give but an imperfect ac- 
count. The young woman who " had pledged her 
soul to meet him in the field of matrimony, yet 
jilted him with peculiar circumstances of mortifi- 
cation," he has not named ; and I suspect her 
charms, real or imaginary, have remained unsung. 
The Tibbie who scorned the advances of the Poet, 
and " spak na, but gade by like stoure," was a 
neighbouring laird's daughter, with a portion of two 
acres of peatmoss, and twenty pounds Scots. The 
Peggy who inspired some of his early lyrics was the 
sister of a Carrick farmer, a girl prudent as well 
as beautiful. The Nannie, who lived among the 
mosses near the Lugar, was a farmer's daughter, 
Agnes Fleming by name, and charmed unconscious- 
ly the sweet song of " My Nannie O" from him, 
by the elegance of her person and the melody of 
her voice. " Green grow the Rashes," was a ge- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 87 

neral tribute paid to the collective charms of the 
lasses of Kyle ; there were few with whom he had 
not held tryste, 

" Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale." 

Some of those maidens were but, perhaps, the 
chance inspirers of his lyric strains. " Highland 
Mary," and " Mary in Heaven," of whom he has 
so passionately sung, was a native of Ardrossan. 
Those who think that poetry embalms high names 
alone, ladies of birth and rank, must prepare to be 
disappointed, for Mary Campbell was a peasant's 
daughter, and lived, when she captivated the Poet, 
in the humble situation of dairy-maid in " The Castle 
of Montgomery." That she was beautiful, we have 
other testimony than that of Burns : her charms at- 
tracted gazers, if not wooers, and she was exposed 
to the allurements of wealth. She withstood all 
temptation, and returned the affection of the Poet 
with the fervour of innocence and youth. " After 
a pretty long trial," says Burns, " of the most 
ardent, reciprocal affection, we met, by appoint- 
ment, on the second Sunday of May, in a seques- 
tered spot on the banks of the Ayr, where we spent 
a day in taking a farewell, before she should embark 
for the West Highlands, to arrange matters among 
her friends for our projected change of life. At the 
close of the autumn following, she crossed the sea 
to meet me at Greenock, where she had scarce landed, 
when she was seized with a malignant fever, which 
hurried my dear girl to her grave in a few days, 
before I could even learn of her illness." — " This 
adieu was performed," says Cromek, " in a striking 
and moving way ; the lovers stood on each side of a 



»» THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

small brook, they laved their hands in the stream, 
and holding a Bible between them, pronounced their 
vows to be faithful to each other. They parted 
never to meet again !" 

The Bible on which they vowed their vows, was 
lately in the possession of the sister of Mary Camp- 
bell, at Ardrossan. On the first volume is written 
by the hand of Burns : " And ye shall not swear 
by my name falsely ; I am the Lord — Leviticus, 
chap. xix. v. 12." On the second volume, the same 
hand has written ; " Thou shalt not forswear- thy- 
self, but shall perform unto the Lord thine oaths. — 
St. Matthew, chap, v., v. 33." And on the blank 
leaves of both volumes is impressed his mark as a 
mason, and also signed below, " Robert Burns, 
Mossgiel." These are touching insertions, but not 
more so than the verses in which he has embodied 
the parting scene :~ 

(f How sweetly bloomed the gay-green birk, 

How rich the hawthorn's blossom, 
As underneath their fragrant shade 

I clasped her to my bosom. 
The golden hours on angel wings 

Flew o'er me and my dearie, 
For dear to me as light and life, 

Was my sweet Highland Mary." 

To the same affectionate young creature, Burns 
addressed a strain of scarcely inferior beauty, be- 
ginning with 

< ' Will ye go to the Indies' my Mary, 
And leave old Scotia's shore ?" 

Nor did he forget her worth in after-life ; his heart 
and fancy frequently travelled back to early scenes 
of joy and sorrow. A tress of her hair is still pre- 
served : it is very long and very light and shining. 
Who the Mary Morison was on whom he wrote one 



I 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 89 

of his early songs, I have not been able to discover ; 
nor do I know the name of the heroine of " Cess- 
nock Banks." Their beauty seems like that of 
many others, to have passed suddenly over him, 
touching his fancy without affecting his heart. The 
Eliza, from whom he seems so loth to part, in one 
of his songs, was, I am told by John Gait, a rela- 
tive of his, and less beautiful than witty. 

To the charms of Jean Armour I have already 
alluded. This young woman, the daughter of a 
devout man and master-mason, lived in Mauchline; 
and was distinguished less for the beauty of her 
person, than for the grace of her dancing and the 
melody of her voice. Burns seems to have become 
attached to her soon after the loss of his Highland 
Mary. In one of his joyous moments, he warned 
the maidens of Mauchline against reading inflam- 
matory novels. — " Their fine Tom Jones and Gran- 
disons" served only as snares, he said, for their 
innocence: — 

" Such witching books 
Are baited hooks 
For rakish rooks 
Like Rob Mossgiel." 

Who those maidens were he tells us in rhyme : — 

" In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, 
The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a' ; — 
— Miss Miller is fine and Miss Markland's divine, 

Miss Smith she has wit and Miss Betty is braw, 
There is beauty and fortune to get with Miss Morton, 
But Armour's the jewel for me o' them a'. " 

How the Poet and his Jean became acquainted is 
easily imagined by those who know the facilities for 
meetings of the young, which fairs, races, dances, 
weddings, house-heatings, kirn-suppers, and bleach- 
ing scenes on bum-banks afford ; of the growth of 



00 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

affection between them it is less easy to give an ac- 
count ; we must trace it by the uncertain light of his 
poetry. 

In the " Epistle of Davie" he alludes to Jean 
Armour by name, and calls her his own ; in the 
" Vision" he compliments the Muse of Kyle by 
comparing her clean straight and taper limbs to 
those of his bonnie Jean ; and in one of his lyrics 
he speaks of the sighs and vows which have passed 
between them among the sequestered hills. It 
would seem, however, that during the season of 
their courtship the Poet felt less sure of the con- 
tinuance of her affection than he had looked for, and 
something like change may be inferred from his 
omitting a verse in the " Address to the Deil," in 
which he likened Eve to Jean Armour ; — 

" A dancing sweet young handsome quean, 
Wi' guileless heart." 

Gilbert charges his brother with seeing charms in 
some of the maidens of Kyle which others could not 
observe ; but that may be said of all beautiful 
things. The ladies whom he celebrated in the latter 
days of his inspiration were — some of them at least 
— eminently lovely ; and we all know that he has 
imputed no more merit to his Jean than what she 
possessed. Burns assured Professor Walker that 
his first desire to excel as a poet arose from the 
influence of the tender passion ; and he informed 
others that all the heroines of his songs were real, 
and not imaginary. He dealt in 

" No idly feigned poetic pains, 

No fabled tortures quaint and tame " 

As the Poet rose, and the lover triumphed, the 
farmer sunk. The farm of Mossgiel lies high, on a 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 91 

cold, wet bottom. During the first four years of 
the lease, instead of kindly and congenial seasons, 
the springs were frosty and late, the summers moist 
and cold ; and to this the Poet glances when he 
makes the old dame in Halloween relate her expe- 
riences : — 

" The simmer had been cauld and wat, 
And stuff was unco green." 

Frosty springs and late cold summers could not be 
foreseen, but any one might have known high lying 
land on a wet bottom. Seasons in which the sun is 
almost scorching other grounds are most congenial 
for such soils, and no one should venture upon a 
farm which requires something like a miracle in the 
weather to render it productive. That Burns took 
pleasure in the labours of agriculture we have the 
assurance of many a voice : he often alludes to the 
holding of the plough, the turning of a handsome 
furrow ; and he rejoices, too, in the growing corn, 
sees it fall before the sickle with something of a cal- 
culating eye, and raises the rick, and coats it over 
with broom against sleet and snow with all the fore- 
sight of a farmer. Of his prowess with the flail, he 
says ;— 

" The thresher's weary flinging tree 
The lee-lang day had tired me." 

And Gilbert says, with the scythe Robert excelled 
all competitors : he had the sleight which is neces- 
sary with strength and activity. In ploughing he 
was likewise skilful : in the " Farmer's Address to 
his Mare," evidently alluding to himself, he says ;— 

" Aft thee and I in aught-hours gaun, 
In guid March weather, 
Hae turned sax rood beside our nan' 
For days thegither, 1 ' 



92 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Elsewhere the Poet speaks of his toil in committing 
the seed-corn to the furrow, and makes the Muse 
plead it as an excuse for declining labouring on Par- 
nassus in the month of April : — 

t( Forjeskit sair, \vi' weary legs, 
Rattlin the corn out-owre the rigs, 
Or dealing through amang the naigs 

Their ten-hours bite, 
My akwart Muse sair pleads and begs 

I wadna write.'' 

Of his farming establishment he gives us some 
insight in his facetious inventory to the surveyor of 
the taxes : it is pleasing to go to the homestead of 
even the cold and ungenial Mossgiel, and look at the 
" gudes, and gear, and graith," with Burns for our 
guide : — 

<( Imprimis, then, for carriage cattle 
I have four brutes of gallant mettle 
As ever drew before a pettle. 
My lan-af ore's a gude auld has-been, 
An' wight and wilfu' a' his days been. 
My lan-ahin's a weel gaun fillie. 
That aft has borne me hame frame Killie. 
And your auld burro mony a time, 
In days when riding was nae crime. 
My fur-ahin's a worthy beast 
As e'er in tug or tow was traced. 
The fourth's a Highland Donald hastie, 
A damned red-wud Kilburnie blastie. 
Forby a cowt, of cowts, the wale, 
As ever ran afore a tail." 

Of his milk-cows and calves, ewes and lambs, the 
mandate required no specification; the Poet 'pro- 
ceeds to his farming implements : they are far from 
numerous : — 

" Wheel carriages I have but few, 
Three carts, an' twa are feckly new, 
An auld wheelbarrow, mair for token, 
Ae leg and baith the trams are broken." 

Ploughs, harrows, shel-bands, rollers, spades, hoes, 
and fanners were not taxed, and are omitted, which 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 93 

I am sorry for ; we come now to the members of 
his household : — 

" For men I've three mischievous boys, 
Run deils for rantin and for noise, 
A gaudsman ane, a thrasher tother, 
Wee Davoc hauds the nowte in fother." 

Nor is the Bard unmindful of maintaining rule and 
spreading information amongst his menials : — 

" I rule them as I ought, discreetly, 
And afien labour them completely. 
And aye on Sundays duly nightly 
I on the questions targe them tightly." 

With respect to maid-servants, as his mother and 
sisters managed the in-door economy of the house, 
he had no occasion for any ; he desired besides, he 
said to be kept out of temptation ; neither had he a 
wife, and as for children, one more had been sent to 
him than he desired : — 

" My sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess, 
She stares the daddie in her face, 
Enough of ought ye like but grace." 

Burns saw in the failure of the farm the coming 
ruin of his mother's household, and despairing of 
success in agriculture, revived a notion which he 
had long entertained of going out as a sort of 
steward to the plantations, a situation which, for a 
small salary, requires the presence of many high 
qualities. Nor did he take this resolution one mo- 
ment too soon : his poetic account of his condition 
and sufferings is not at all poetical ;— 

'* To tremble under Fortune's cummock, 
On scarce a belly fu' o' drummock, 
For his proud, independent stomach, 

Could ill agree." 

But bodily discomfort was not all : he might, to use 
his own language, have braved the bitter blast of 
misfortune, which, long mustering over his head, was 



94 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

about to descend ; but sorrows of a tender nature, 
from which there was no escape, came pouring upon 
him in a flood. 

This part of the Poet's history has been painted 
variously : delicacy towards the living, and respect 
for the dead, seemed to call for gentle handling ; 
but this could not always be obtained; for rude 
hands were but too ready to aggravate the outline 
and darken the colours. The courtship between 
Burns and Jean Armour continued for several 
years ; and there is no question, had fortune per- 
mitted, but that they would have been man and wife 
the first year of their acquaintance. But Barns was 
not poor only — he had no chance of becoming rich, 
and the day of marriage was placed at the mercy of 
fortune. There were other obstacles : Jean was 
not only the daughter of a man rigid and devout, 
but the favourite child of one of the believers in 
the glory of the Old Light. Her father discoun- 
tenanced the addresses which a profane scoffer 
and irreligious rhymer was making to his child, 
and the lovers, denied the sanction of paternal care, 
and the shelter of the domestic roof, had recourse 
to stolen meetings under the cloud of night, to twi- 
light interviews under the greenwood tree ; to 
the solace of " a cannie hour at 'een/' and those 
" sighs and vows among the knowes" of which the 
Poet has sung with so much passion. In protracted 
courtship there is always danger ; prudence seldom 
takes much care of the young and the warm-hearted : 
Jean was not out of her teens, and thought more of 
her father's ungentleness than of her own danger; 
the Poet's respect for sweetness and innocence pro- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 95 

tected her for a while — but he was doomed to feel 
what he afterwards sung: — 

" Wha can prudence think upon, 
And sic a lassie by him ? 
Wha can prudence think upon, 
And sae in love as I am ?" 

These convoyings home in the dark, and meet- 
ings under " the milk-white thorn," ended in the 
Poet being promised to be made a father before 
he had become a husband. This, to one so desti- 
tute and utterly poor as Burns, was a stunning 
event : but that was not the worst ; the father of 
Jean Armour heard with much anguish of his fa- 
vourite daughter's condition ; and when, on her 
knees before him, she implored forgiveness, and 
shewed the marriage lines — as the private acknow- 
ledgment of marriage without the sanction of the 
kirk is called — his anguish grew into anger which 
overflowed all bounds, and heeded neither his daugh- 
ter's honour nor her husband's fame. He snatched 
her marriage certificate from her, threw it into the 
fire, and commanded her to think herself no longer 
the wife of the Poet. It must be accepted as a 
proof of paternal power that Jean trembled and 
obeyed : she forgot that Burns was still her husband 
in the sight of Heaven, and according to the laws of 
man : she refused to see him, or hearken to aught he 
could say ; and, in short, was ruled in everything 
by the blind hatred of her father. 

What the Poet thought of all this we have abun- 
dance of testimony. Though his indignation against 
Mr. Armour could not but be high, it is to his 
honour that he refrained from giving him further 
pain than he had inflicted already : he spoke, too, 



96 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

of Jean more in sorrow than in anger. In the first 
outburst of passion, on finding that she refused to 
call herself his wife, and had allowed her marriage 
lines to be burnt, he indulged in a sort of bitter 
mirth ; and, in a poem of great merit, and greater 
freedom of expression, sang of the vexation which 
Kyle and her maidens must feel at parting with one 
who could doubly soothe them with love-making 
and song. He alludes to the cause of his departure 
to the West Indies — 

"He saw Misfortune's cauld nor-west 
Lang mustering up a bitter blast ; 
A Jillet brak his heart at last, 
111 may she be ! 
So took a birth afore the mast, 
An r ovvre the sea." 

He speaks, too, of his way of life, and accounts 
for the poverty of a poet with a clear income of 
seven pounds a year ! — 

" He ne'er was gien to great misguiding, 
Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in ; 
Wi' him it ne"er was under hiding, 

He dealt it free ; 
The Muse was a' that he took pride in, 
That's owre the sea." 

This mirthful mood did not last long ; there is 
little gaiety in his letter to David Bryce, of June 12th, 
1786, — " I am still in the land of the living, though 
I can scarcely say in the place of hope. What poor 
ill-advised Jean thinks of her conduct, I don't know ; 
but one thing I do know — she has made me com- 
pletely miserable. Never man loved, or rather 
adored, a woman more than I did her ; and, to con- 
fess a truth between you and me, I do still love her 
to distraction after all. My poor dear unfortunate 
Jean ! It is not the losing her that makes me so 
unhappy, but for her sake I feel most severely : I 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 97 

foresee she is in the road to, I fear, eternal ruin. 
May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and 
perjury to me, as I from my very soul forgive her ; 
and may his grace he with her and "bless her in all 
her future life ! I can have no nearer idea of the 
place of eternal punishment than what I have felt in 
my own breast on her account. I have tried often 
to forget her ; I have run into all kinds of dissipa- 
tion and riots, mason-meetings, drinking-matches, 
and other mischief, to drive her out of my head, hut 
all in vain. And now for a grand cure : the ship is 
on her way home that is to take me out to Jamaica ; 
and then farewell, dear old Scotland ! and farewell, 
dear ungrateful Jean ! for never, never will I see you 
more." In this touching letter the Poet sets off 
his own sufferings against Jean Armour's shame ; 
and we may calculate their depth and acuteness 
from his looking on her as ungrateful. 

He gave vent to the same feeling in the most 
pathetic of all modern poems, " The Lament for 
the unfortunate Issue of a Friend's Amour :" every 
stanza is most exquisitely mournful :— 

" No idly feigned poetic pains 

My sad love-lorn lamentings claim ; 
No shepherd's pipe — Arcadian strains ; 

No fabled tortures, quaint and tame : 
The plighted faith, the mutual flame, 

The oft-attested powers above, 
The promised father's tender name — 

These were the pledges of my love." 

The account rendered by Gilbert makes Robert 
consent to the destruction of the marriage lines, 
which is at least doubtful. In truth, there was much 
anguish on all sides ; and, condemning the stern 
father as we do, we cannot help reverencing the feel- 

VOL. I. H 



98 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ing which sacrificed his daughter's peace in this 
world, in the belief that he was securing happiness 
for her in the next. That he doubted her constancy, 
I have heard affirmed by those who had an opportu- 
nity of knowing ; and, to remove temptation from her 
path, acquiesced in the Poet's resolution to push his 
fortune in Jamaica, though there is no foundation, 
perhaps, for the surmise that he more than tolerated 
the parish authorities to pursue Burns according to 
law, for the maintenance of the promised babe, in 
order to hasten his departure. This is, nevertheless, 
countenanced by the circumstance of his ability to 
keep the child. Had he promised this, the Poet 
would not have been obliged to skulk " from covert 
to covert, under all the terrors of a gaol;" and he 
means more than the usual parochial authorities, 
when he says — " Some ill-advised persons had un- 
coupled the merciless pack of the law at my heels." 
Amid all these miseries of mind and sufferings of 
body, Burns brought out that volume which first told 
the world that a new and a mighty poet had arisen 
in the land. This, though forced from him by " the 
luckless star which ruled his lot," had been often 
present to his contemplation. He resorted to it not 
so much to gratify his love of fame, as with the hope 
that the publication would bring money enough to 
convey him over the Atlantic ; nor were friends 
wanting to aid him in this very moderate desire. It 
is to the credit of the personal merit of Burns, and 
to the honour of his associates, that they shrunk not 
from his side in the trying hour of adversity. Among 
these, Gavin Hamilton ; Robert Aikin, writer, Ayr ; 
John Ballantyne, banker, Ayr ; Robert Muir, mer- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 99 

chant, Kilmarnock ; and William Parker, merchant, 
Kilmarnock, were the most active and conspicuous. 
Parker alone subscribed for thirty-five copies. There 
is little merit in discovering and befriending genius 
when Fame is sounding her trumpet, and crying, 
11 Behold the man whom the king delighteth to 
honour!" but to mark talents, and aid them when 
the possessor is struggling out of darkness into light, 
shews either great generosity or a fine judgment, or 
both. Thus supported, he was enabled to enter 
into terms with Wilson, a printer, in Kilmarnock. 
The Poet undertook to supply manuscript, walk 
daily into Kilmarnock to correct the press, and pay 
all the expenses incident to printing six hundred 
copies. 

Of what passed in the mind of Burns at this moment, 
we have his own account to Moore : — " I weighed," 
said he, " my productions as impartially as was in 
my power. I thought they had merit ; and it was a 
delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, 
even though it should never reach my ears — a poor 
negro-driver, or perhaps a victim to that inhospitable 
clime, and gone to the world of spirits. To know 
myself had been all along my constant study ; I 
weighed myself alone, I balanced myself with others, 
I watched every means of information, to see how 
much ground I occupied as a man and a poet ; I 
studied assiduously Nature's design in my formation, 
where the lights and shades in character were in- 
tended. I was pretty confident my poems would 
meet with some applause ; but, at the worst, the 
roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of cen- 
sure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make 
h 2 



100 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, 
having got subscriptions for about three hundred 
and fifty." " Wee Johnnie," the printer, the body 
without a soul of the Poet's epigram, shrewdly re- 
marked that a poem of a grave nature would be 
better for beginning with : Burns acted on the hint, 
and in walking between Kilmarnock and Mossgiel, 
composed, or rather completed the " Twa Dogs." 
At that period, ruin had him so effectually in the 
wind, that even food became scanty ; a piece of oat- 
cake and a bottle of twopenny ale made his custo- 
mary dinner, when correcting the first edition of his 
immortal works, and of this he was not always 
certain. 

In July, 1786, the poems of Burns made their 
appearance ; he introduced them with a preface, 
intimating his condition in life, and claiming for 
them the protection of his country. " Unacquainted 
with the necessary requisites for commencing poet 
by rule, he sings the sentiments and manners he 
felt, and saw in himself and his rustic compeers 
around him, in his and their native language. To 
amuse himself with the little creations of his own 
fancy, amid the toils and fatigues of a laborious life ; 
to transcribe the various feelings, the loves, the 
griefs, the hopes, the fears in his own breast ; to 
find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of 
a world — always an alien scene — a task uncouth 
to the poetical mind — these were his motives for 
courting the muses, and in these he found poetry 
to be its own reward. ' Humility,' says Shen- 
stone, ' has depressed many a genius to a hermit, 
but never raised one to fame ! J If any critic catches 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 101 

at the word genius, the author tells him, once for all, 
that he certainly looks upon himself as possessed of 
some poetic abilities ; otherwise his publishing in the 
manner he has done would be a manoeuvre below 
the worst character which he hopes his worst enemy 
will ever give him." The heart- warm welcome which 
Iris poems received in his own district fulfilled the 
hopes of the Poet ; all read who could obtain the 
book, and all who read applauded ; even the chil- 
dren of the Old Light admitted that he was a won- 
drous rhymer to be a profane person. The whole im- 
pression was soon disposed of; the fears of " Wee 
Johnnie," the printer, anent remuneration were al- 
layed, and twenty pounds and odd remained in the 
pockets of the wondering bard, after defraying all 
expenses. The first use he made of his good for- 
tune was to renew his application for a situation in 
the West Indies, and lay aside a sum sufficient to 
waft him over the sea. With a desire of keeping 
such a genius at home, his steadfast friends, Hamil- 
ton and Aikin, sought to obtain him an appoint- 
ment in the Excise — an evil which awaited him on 
a later day. 

With some, the rising of this western star in 
poetry was looked for ; his poems in manuscript had 
been widely circulated in Ayrshire, but to Scotland 
at large his appearance was unexpected ; and had a 
July sun risen on a December morning, the un- 
wonted light could not have given greater sur- 
prise. The fame of the bard of Mauchline flew 
east, west, north, and south. A love of poetry 
belongs as much to the humble classes of the north 
as to the high ; and to people who had much of 



102 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Ramsay and Fergusson by heart, the more lofty 
and passionate poetry of Burns could not fail to 
be welcome. The milkmaid sung his songs, the 
ploughmen and shepherds repeated his poems, while 
the old and the sagacious quoted his verses in con- 
versation, glad to find that matters of fancy could 
be made useful. My father, who was fond of poetry, 
procured the volume from a Cameronian clergyman, 
with this remarkable admonition, " Keep it out of 
the way of your children, John, lest ye catch them 
as I caught mine, reading it on the sabbath." 

' ' It is hardly possible," says Heron, " to express 
with what eager admiration and delight the poems 
were everywhere received. They eminently pos- 
sessed all those qualities which can contribute to 
render any literary work quickly and permanently 
popular. They were written in a phraseology of 
which all the powers were universally felt ; and 
which being at once antique, familiar, and now 
rarely written, was hence fitted to serve all the 
dignified and picturesque uses of poetry, without 
making it unintelligible. The imagery, the senti- 
ments, were at once faithfully natural, and irresistibly 
impressive and interesting. Those topics of satire and 
scandal in which the rustic delights, that humorous 
delineation of character, and that witty association 
of ideas, familiar and striking, yet not naturally 
allied to one another, which has force to shake his 
sides with laughter ; those fancies of superstition at 
which he still wonders and trembles ; those affecting 
sentiments and images of true religion, which are at 
once dear and awful to his heart, were represented 
by Burns with all a poet's magic power. Old and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 103 

young, high and low, grave and gay, learned or 
ignorant, all were alike delighted, agitated, and 
transported." 

To many copies of his works the Poet added other 
attractions : he caused blank leaves to be inserted, 
on which he wrote such favourite sallies of love or 
humour as he had refrained from printing ; or, more 
solicitous still to please, inscribed neat and com- 
plimentary lines addressed to those who, by their 
taste and station, might either feel his merit or be 
disposed to patronize -him. Of those whom he 
sought to propitiate, one of the most eminent was 
Dugald Stewart: during the summer months the 
professor and his first lady lived at Catrine, Burns 
was sometimes their guest ; and much as they were 
pleased with his verses, they were still more so with 
his conversation, which was unaffected and manly. 
During one of his visits he was introduced to Lord 
Daer, and as this seems to have been the first time 
he had met a lord, he recorded the event in rhymes 
equally vigorous and untranslatable; his emotions 
are described as no one but himself could have de- 
scribed them : — 

(( But, oh ! for Hogarth's matchless power, 
To show Sir Bardie's willyart glower, 

An' how he star'd an' stammered, 
When goavan as if led wi' branks, 
An' stumpan on his ploughman shanks, 

He in the parlour hammered." 

His poems touched the gentlest hearts: Mrs. 
Stewart of Stair, a lady accomplished as well as 
kind, was one of the first to admire them, and to 
renew her acquaintance with the author ; neither 
her kindness nor that of the Stewarts of Catrine were 
forgotten. Upon the robe of Coila he depicted per- 



104 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

haps too many complimentary things : in the " Brigs 
of Ayr" he is more select : — 

" Next followed Courage, with his martial stride, 
From where the Feal wild woody coverts hide ; 
Benevolence, with mild, benignant air, 
A female form, came from the towers of Stair : 
Learning and Worth in equal measures trod 
From simple Catrine, their long-loved abode." 

Nor did Burns think this enough : the woods of 
Catrine are mentioned in one or more of his suc- 
ceeding songs, and the Lady of the Towers of Stair 
is remembered in a lyric of no common beauty. He 
imagines himself straying on the banks of Afton 
"Water, and perceives the heroine asleep among the 
flowers on its side. He then addresses the stream, 
and promises to sing a song to its honour if it will 
flow softly, nor disturb the repose of one so sweet 
and beautiful. The lady understood the forward 
ways of the muse, and smiled. Mrs. Scott, of Wau- 
chope-house, a painter and poetess, in a rhyming 
letter of considerable ease and gaiety, intimated her 
admiration of the " Can tie witty rhyming plough- 
man." In his answer Burns alludes to his aspira- 
tions, when " beardless, young, and blate," with 
great felicity : — 

' < Even then a wish, I mind its power, 
A wish, that to my latest hour 

Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book could make, 
Or sing a sang at least." 

But the friendship which the various biographers 
of Burns seem to be most solicitous about, is that of 
Mrs. Dunlop, of Dunlop. That lady, the daughter 
of Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie, was proud of her 
descent from the race of Elderslie, and proud of her 



THE LIFE OF ROB 




105 



acquirements, which were c^HH^HHv 1 should 
we leave unmentioned that shffiti JP^ftfcie'i'talent for 
rhyme. She had been ailing^PSrolfirst advantage 
which she took of returning health was to read the 
poems of the Ayrshire ploughman. She was struck 
with the beauty, natural and religious, of the " Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night." — " The Poet's description of 
the simple cottagers/' she told Gilbert Burns, " ope- 
rated on her mind like the charm of a powerful 
exorcist, repelling the demon ennui, and restoring 
her to her wonted harmony and satisfaction." An 
express, sent sixteen miles, for half-a-dozen copies 
of the book, and an invitation to Dunlop-house, 
attested her sincerity. Nor was the Poet less sincere 
in his answer — he admired her illustrious ancestor. — 
" In my boyish days," he observes, " I remember 
in particular being struck with that part of Wallace's 
story where these lines occur : — 

f Syne to the Leglen wood when it was late, 
To make a silent and a safe retreat.' 

I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my 
line of life allowed, and walked half-a-dozen miles 
to pay my respects to the Leglen wood, with as 
much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did to 
Loretto ; and as I explored every den and dell 
where I could suppose my heroic countrymen to have 
lodged, I recollect — for even then I was a rhymer — 
that my heart glowed with a wish to be able to make 
a song on him in some measure equal to his me- 
rits." All this was in unison with the feelings of 
the lady as well as with his own. From this period 
we must date a friendship which did not close with 




106 T»r*n**IWBte--KOBERT BURNS. 



the Poet'$M|^^lirff4Mpfeich we owe many of his 
most dignifiui -fttfbMa^jpy letters. 

But the nmee-br lords* the attention of professors, 
and the kindness of beauty, were empty though 
honourable things ; the twenty pounds which his 
speculation in verse brought diminished rather than 
increased, and he felt, with a darkening spirit, that 
he could not live on applause. It never seems to 
have occurred to any one of his wealthy admirers 
that he was in a state of destitution, and that many 
places of profit existed which he could fill with 
honour. He who is invited to feast at a distance 
with the powerful and the polite — who has to w T alk 
seven miles of rough road to the dinner-table — is 
expected to write songs on the beautiful — be witty 
with the witty, and at midnight return to his blanket 
and his straw, must be considered as having earned 
his dinner fairly — and this happened often to Burns. 
All that his poetry brought him was barren ap- 
plause; and when he consulted " Wee Johnnie" 
about publishing a second edition, the printer de- 
murred, which so incensed the Poet, that he would 
not speak again on the subject, and refused the 
generous offers of several of his first and best friends 
to subscribe for copies enow to secure Wilson 
against loss. He now looked seriously to the West 
Indies, procured the situation of overseer on an 
estate in Jamaica belonging to Dr. Douglas, and 
prepared for departure. Of this all his friends seem 
to have been aware, but no one interposed. It was 
now the middle of November, and the sound which 
his poems had raised in the country began to die 
away. * 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 107 

There was still one family of influence in the 
district to whom Burns had not been introduced ; 
and as no one had tried to do this for him, he now 
resolved to do it for himself. In the preceding July, 
it seems, he had accidentally met Miss Alexander, 
of Ballochmyle, a young lady of great beauty, among 
her native woods on the banks of Ayr. How the 
river banks looked in those days I know not, but 
the bard instantly clothed them with flowers, gave 
odorous dews to the grass, a richer incense to the 
fields of beans, a sweeter song to the thrush, and a 
brighter sunshine to the tree-tops ; and into this na- 
tural shrine introduced his new object of adoration, 
under the name of " The Lass of Ballochmyle. w 
Neither elegance of thought nor of expression were 
wanting to render the compliment acceptable : — 

M With careless step 1 onward strayed, 

My heart rejoiced in nature's joy, 
When musing in a lonely glade 

A maiden fair I chanced to spy ; 
Her look was like the morning's eye, 

Her air like nature's vernal smile, 
Perfection whispered, passing by, 

* Behold the lass of Ballochmyle.' " 

As he proceeds with his song, the Bard recollects 
that loveliness is sent into the world for other pur- 
poses than to be gazed at, and exclaims, much to the 
distress of gentle critics and fastidious spinsters — 
who looked, it seems, for a display of chivalry in- 
stead of nature : — 

" O ! had she been a country maid, 

And I the happy country swain, 
Tho' sheltered in the lowliest shed 

That ever rose on Scotland's plain, 
Thro' weary winter's wind and rain 

With joy, with rapture, I would toil, 
And nightly to my bosom strain 

The bonny lass of Ballochmyle." 



108 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

He copied this fine lyric out in a fair hand, and sent 
it to Miss Alexander, accompanied by a letter, the 
composition of which, it is said, cost him more la- 
bour than the song. It has not, however, all the 
happy ease of the verse Of the song he says : — 
" The scenery was nearly taken from real life, 
though I dare say, madam, you do not recollect it, 
as I believe you scarcely noticed the poetic reveur 
as he wandered by you. I had roved out as chance 
directed, in the favourite haunts of my muse on the 
banks of Ayr, to view nature in all the gaiety of the 
vernal year. The evening sun was flaming over the 
distant western hills ; not a breath stirred the crim- 
son opening blossom or the verdant spreading leaf. 
It was a golden moment for a poetic heart. I lis- 
tened to the feathered warblers pouring their har- 
mony on every hand with a congenial kindred regard, 
and frequently turned out of my w T ay, lest I should 
disturb their little songs, or frighten them to another 
station. Such was the scene and such the hour, 
when in a corner of my prospect I spied one of the 
fairest pieces of Nature's workmanship that ever 
crowned a poetic landscape or met a poet's eye, those 
visionary bards excepted who hold converse with 
aerial beings. Had Calumny and Villainy taken my 
walk, they had at that moment sworn eternal peace 
with such an object. What an hour of inspiration 
for a poet ! it would have raised plain dull historic 
prose into metaphor and measure. The enclosed 
song was the work of my return home ; and, per- 
haps, it but poorly answers what might have been 
expected from such a scene." 

What the lady thought of the song we are not 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 109 

told — what Burns thought of her silence he has in- 
formed us. She paid no attention to his effusions, 
and wounded his self-love by her ungracious neglect. 
Currie and Lockhart have united in defending the 
" Lass of Ballochmyle." " Her modesty," says the 
first, " might prevent her from perceiving that the 
muse of Tibullus breathed in this nameless poet, 
and that her beauty was awakening strains destined 
to immortality on the banks of the Ayr. Burns was 
at that time little known, and, where known at all, 
noted rather for the wild strength of his humour than 
for those strains of tenderness in which he afterwards 
so much excelled. To the lady herself, his name, 
perhaps, had never been mentioned." — " His verses," 
says the latter, " written in commemoration of that 
passing glimpse of her beauty, are conceived in a 
strain of luxurious fervour, which, certainly, coming 
from a man of Burns' station and character, must 
have sounded very strangely in a delicate maiden's 
ear." These remarks might have been spared ; the 
man and his poems were well known to all in the 
west country long before the 18th of November, 
1786 : we must not suppose Miss Alexander more 
fastidious and difficult to please than Mrs. Stewart 
of Catrine, Mrs. Stewart of Stair, or Mrs. Dunlop, 
with whom he was living on terms of friendship 
before that time. He who had written and published 
" Man was made to mourn," " The Daisy," " The 
Mouse," and " The Cotter's Saturday Night," was 
known for more than the wild strength of his hu- 
mour ; nor can we imagine that any lady of educa- 
tion could feel much alarm at the fervour of the 
song : Miss Alexander knew that poetry and love 



110 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

are brothers, and that the latter acknowledges no 
other merit than what is personal. The Poet chose, 
rather than " raise a mortal to the skies," to " bring 
an angel down." The heroine lived till lately — but 
she lived to think the honours of the muse the 
highest that could be conferred on her : the song 
elegantly framed was hung in her chamber and was 
carried with her whenever she travelled. 

This was the last of his efforts to obtain notice in 
his native district. He now wrote to his friends, 
Hamilton and Aikin, saying, he was afraid that his 
follies would prevent him from enjoying a situation 
in the Excise, even if it could be procured ; he was 
pining in secret wretchedness ; disappointment, 
pride, and remorse were settling on his vitals like 
vultures, and in an hour of social mirth his gaiety 
was the madness of an intoxicated criminal under 
the hands of the executioner. — " All these reasons," 
he says, " urge me to go abroad, and to all these 
reasons I have only one answer — the feelings of a 
father. This, in the present mood I am in, over- 
balances everything that can be laid in the scale 
against it." He wrote in the same strain to others. 
This was on the 19th of November ; on the 20th he 
enclosed a copy of " Holy Willie's Prayer" to his 
comrades, Chalmers and M'Adam, desiring it might 
be burnt, as a thing abominable and wicked, at the 
Cross of Ayr ; and on the twenty-second, he wrote, 
as he imagined, the last song he was to measure in 
Caledonia : — 

« The gloomy night is gath'ring fast, 
Loud roars the wild, inconstant blast, 
Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, 
I see it driving o'er the plain ; 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. Ill 

Chill runs my blood to hear it rave, 
I think upon the stormy wave, 
Where many a danger I must dare, 
Far from the bonnie banks of Ayr." 

His feelings were not expressed in song alone : 
he remembered his daughter and his mother, and 
made an assignment of all that pertained to him on 
the farm of Mossgiel, and the entire copyright and 
proceeds of his poems for their advantage, to his 
brother Gilbert ; this document was publicly read at 
" the Mercat-cross of Ayr," by William Chalmers, 
notary public. 

It was well for the world, and, perhaps, unfortu- 
nate for Burns, that when he had proclaimed this 
assignment of goods and verse, bid farewell to his 
friends, put his chest on the way to Greenock, and 
was about to follow, a letter from Dr. Blacklock 
overthrew all his schemes. The way this came about 
has something in it of the romantic. Laurie, minis- 
ter of Loudoun, a kind and steadfast friend, sent a 
copy of the poems, with a short account of Burns, 
to his friend, Dr. Blacklock, a middling poet, but a 
most worthy man, with unbounded kindness of na- 
ture and generosity of soul. Blacklock was blind, 
and as he could not read for himself, an almost fatal 
delay took place : the ship was unmooring, and the 
Poet on the wing, when his opinion of the poems, 
and the steps which he advised the author to take, 
reached the hands of Laurie. The letter was in- 
stantly forwarded to Burns, who read it with sur- 
prise not unmingled with tears. The blind bard 
was none of your cold formal men who give guarded 
opinions — he said what he felt; and as his heart was 



112 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

in the right place, spoke out with a warmth and an 
ecstasy new in the province of criticism : — 

" Many instances have I seen/' he says, " of na- 
ture's force or "beneficence exerted under numerous 
and formidahle disadvantages, but none equal to 
that with which you have been kind enough to pre- 
sent me. There is a pathos and delicacy in his se- 
rious poems, a vein of wit and humour in those of 
a more festive turn, which cannot be too much ad- 
mired nor too warmly approved : and I think I shall 
never open the book without feeling my astonish- 
ment renewed and increased. It has been told me 
by a gentleman to whom I showed the performances, 
and who sought a copy with diligence and ardour, 
that the whole impression is already exhausted. It 
were, therefore, much to be wished, for the sake of 
the young man, that a second edition, more nume- 
rous than the former, should immediately be printed ; 
as it appears certain that its intrinsic merit, and the 
exertions of the author's friends, might give it a 
more universal circulation than anything of the kind 
which has been published in my memory." — " This 
encouragement," says Burns, " fired me so much, 
that away I posted to Edinburgh, without a single 
acquaintance or a single letter of introduction. The 
baneful star that had so long shed its blasting in- 
fluence on my zenith for once made a revolution to 
the nadir." That he was personally unknown to 
any one of influence in Edinburgh, save Dugald 
Stewart, and that he took letters of introduction to 
no one, is perfectly true. Pride had something to 
do in this. He had begun to feel that a warm dinn el- 
and a kind word were to be his chief portion in 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 113 

Kyle ; and the silence of one, and the coldness of 
another, stung him, it is said, deeper than even he 
was willing to allow. He determined to owe his 
future fortune, whatever it might be, to no one 
around ; he turned his face to Arthur's Seat, and 
sung with much buoyancy of heart, as he went, a 
soothing snatch of an old ballad : — 

" As I came in by Glenap, 
I met with an aged woman, 
She bade me cheer up my heart, 
For the best of my days was coming." 



PART II :— EDINBURGH. 

The first appearance of Burns in Edinburgh was 
humble enough. The money reserved to waft him to 
the West Indies had been laid out on clothes for this 
new expedition, or on the family at Mossgiel ; and, 
having little in his pocket, he found his way to 
his friend Richmond, a writer's apprentice, and ac- 
cepted the offer of a share of his room and bed, in 
the house of a Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter's-close, Lawn- 
market. Though he had taken a stride from the 
furrowed field into the land of poetry, and abandoned 
the plough for the harp, he seemed for some days to 
feel, as in earlier life, unfitted with an aim, and wan- 
dered about, looking down from Arthur's Seat, sur- 
veying the Palace, gazing at the Castle, or contem- 
plating the windows of the booksellers' shops, where 
he saw all works, save the poems of the Ayrshire 
Ploughman. He found his way to the lowly grave 
of Fergusson, and, kneeling down, kissed the sod : 

VOL. I. i 



114 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

he sought out the house of Allan Ramsay, and, on 
entering it took off his hat ; and, when he was 
afterwards introduced to Creech, the bibliopole re- 
membered that he had before heard him inquiring if 
this had been the shop of the author of " The 
Gentle Shepherd." In one of these excursions he 
happened to meet with an Ayrshire friend, Mr. 
Dalrymple, of Orangefield ; others say Mr. Dal- 
zell — and some say both — by whom he was intro- 
duced to James Earl of Glencairn, who took him by 
the hand, and with small persuasion prevailed on 
Creech to become the publisher of the contemplated 
edition on terms favourable to Burns. The Poet 
stipulated to receive one hundred pounds for the 
copyright of one edition, with the profits of the sub- 
scription copies. A prospectus was drawn out, a 
vast number printed and circulated over the island, 
and subscriptions came pouring in with a rapidity 
unknown in the history of Scottish genius. 

It is honourable to the patricians of the north 
that they welcomed the Poet with much cordiality, 
and subscribed largely ; it is honourable to the 
stately literati of Edinburgh that they not only re- 
ceived their rustic brother gladly into their ranks, 
but spoke everywhere of his fine genius with un- 
dissembled rapture, and introduced him wherever 
introductions were beneficial : but it is still more 
honourable to the husbandmen, the shepherds, and 
the mechanics of Scotland, that though wages were 
small, and money scarce, they subscribed for copies 
in fifties and in hundreds, and thus extended the 
patronage, always the most welcome since it implies 
admiration. Of the noblemen, the most active was 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 115 

the Earl of Glencairn : through his influence the 
association called the Caledonian Hunt, consisting 
of the chiefs of the northern aristocracy, consented 
to accept the dedication of the new edition, and to 
subscribe individually for copies : the gentlemen, 
too, of the west, proud that their district, long un- 
productive in high genius, had ceased to be barren, 
vied with each other in promoting the interest of the 
Bard of Kyle ; while Blair, Robertson, Blacklock, 
Smith, Fergusson, Stewart, Mackenzie, Tytler, and 
Lords Craig and Monboddo — all men distinguished 
in the world of letters, lent their still more effectual 
aid ; nay, some of them carried the subscription-lists 
in their pockets, and obtained names through all 
their wide range of acquaintance. 

Burns arrived in Edinburgh at the close of No- 
vember, 1786; and before, as he poetically said, 
the cry of the cuckoo was heard, no less than two 
thousand eight hundred and odd copies were sub- 
scribed for by fifteen hundred and odd subscribers. 
His genius was already felt by high and low — let- 
tered and unlettered. The Caledonian Hunt took 
one hundred copies ; Creech took five hundred ; the 
Earl of Eglinton, forty-two ; the Duchess of Gor- 
don, twenty-one ; the Earl of Glencairn and his 
Countess, twenty-four ; the Scots College at Valla- 
dolid, the Scots College at Douay, the Scots College 
at Paris, the Scots Benedictine Monastery at Ratis- 
bon, severally took copies ; Campbell, of Clathick, 
subscribed for twelve ; Douglas, of Cavers, for 
eight ; Dalrymple, of Orangefield, for ten ; Dunlop, 
of Dunlop, for six ; Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, 
for eight ; Lord Graham, for twelve ; Gray, of Gart- 

i2 



116 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

craig, for six ; Sir James Hunter Blair, for eight ; 
Hamilton, of Argyle- square, Edinburgh, for eight. 
Subscriptions for four copies are very numerous : 
one-half, however, of the list, is composed of hum- 
ble names ; nor should the weavers of the west be 
forgotten. The sons of the shuttle went not more 
willingly from Kilmarnock to Mauchline Holy Fair, 
than they poured in their names for their Poet's 
works. 

Of the manners and appearance of Burns in Edin- 
burgh much has been written and said ; every step 
which he took to the right or to the left has been 
noted ; the company which he kept has afforded 
matter for philosophic speculation, and his sayings 
and doings have found a place in the memoranda 
of the learned, and in the memories of the polite. 
Even when weighed in the balance of acquired taste 
and artificial manners, the Poet was scarcely found 
wanting : he was come of a class who think strongly, 
speak freely, and act as they think. The natural 
good manners which belong to genius were his : but 
accustomed to hold argument with his rustic com- 
peers, and to vanquish them more by rough vigour 
than by delicate persuasion, he had some difficulty 
in schooling down his impetuous spirit into the 
charmed circle of conventional politeness. That he 
sometimes observed and sometimes neglected this, 
is natural enough ; the fervid impatience of his tem- 
per hurried him into the van at times when his post 
was in the rear. He had too little tolerance for the 
stately weak and the learnedly dull : and holding 
the patent of his own honours immediately from 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 117 

God, he scarcely could be brought to pay homage 
to honours arising from humbler sources. 

But if he refused to be tame in the society of the 
titled and the learned, he was another being in the 
company of the fair and the lovely. His poetry at 
first sprung from love ; and though ambition now- 
claimed its share, the softness and amenity of the 
purer passion triumphed, and with the lovely he 
was all pathos and persuasion, gaiety and grace. 
His look changed, his eye beamed milder, all that 
was stern or contradictory in his nature vanished 
when he heard the rustle of approaching silks : 
charmed himself by beauty, he charmed beauty in 
his turn. In large companies the loveliness cf 
the north formed a circle round where he sat ; 
and with the feathers of duchesses and ladies of high 
degree fanning his brow, he was all gentleness and 
attention. The Duchess of Gordon said that Burns, 
in his address to ladies, was extremely deferential, 
and always with a turn to the pathetic or the hu- 
morous, which won their attention ; and added, with 
much naivete, that she never met with a man whose 
conversation carried her so completely off her feet. 
He who was often intractable and fierce in the pre- 
sence of man, grew soft and submissive in the com- 
pany of woman : this was neither unobserved or 
unrewarded. When, in his later days, many men 
looked on the setting of the star of Burns with un- 
concern or coldness, the fair and the lovely neither 
slackened in their admiration nor their friendship. 

How he appeared in the sight of others, Dugald 
Stewart has told us. — " He came," says the Pro- 
fessor, " to Edinburgh early in the winter: the at- 



118 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

tentions which he received during his stay in town 
from all ranks and descriptions of persons was such 
as would have turned any head but his own. I 
cannot say that I could perceive any unfavourable 
effect which they left on his mind. He retained the 
same simplicity of manners and appearance which 
had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in 
the country ; nor did he seem to feel any additional 
self-importance from the number and rank of his 
new acquaintance. His dress was perfectly suited 
to his station — plain and unpretending, with suf- 
ficient attention to neatness. If I recollect right, 
he always wore boots ; and when on more than 
usual ceremony, buckskin-breeches. His manners 
were then, as they continued ever afterwards, simple, 
manly, and independent ; strongly expressive of 
conscious genius and worth, but without anything 
that indicated frowardness, arrogance, or vanity. 
He took his share in conversation, but not more 
than belonged to him ; and listened, with apparent 
attention and deference, on subjects where his want 
of education deprived him of the means of informa- 
tion. If there had been a little more of gentleness 
and accommodation in his temper, he would, I think, 
have been still more interesting ; but he had been 
accustomed to give law in the circle of his ordinary 
acquaintance, and his dread of anything approach- 
ing to meanness or servility rendered his manner 
somewhat decided and hard. Nothing, perhaps, 
was more remarkable among his various attainments 
than the fluency, and precision, and originality of 
his language when he spoke in company : more par- 
ticularly as he aimed at purity in his turn of ex- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 119 

pression, and avoided more successfully than most 
Scotchmen the peculiarities of Scottish phraseology. 

" In the course of the spring (1787) he called on 
me once or twice at my request, early in the morn- 
ing, and walked with me to Braid Hills in the 
neighbourhood of the town, where he charmed me 
still more by his private conversation than he had 
ever done in company. He was passionately fond 
of the beauties of nature : and I recollect he once 
told me, when I was admiring a distant prospect in 
one of our morning walks, that the sight of so many 
smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind which 
none could understand who had not witnessed, like 
himself, the happiness and worth which cottages 
contained. Among the poets whom I have hap- 
pened to know, I have been struck in more than one 
instance with the unaccountable disparity between 
their general talent and the occasional inspirations 
of their more favoured moments. But all the fa- 
culties of Burns' mind were, as far as I could judge, 
equally vigorous, and his predilection for poetry was 
rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impas- 
sioned temper, than of a genius exclusively adapted 
to that species of composition. From his conversa- 
tion, I should have pronounced him to be fitted to 
excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen 
to exert his abilities. Notwithstanding various re- 
ports I heard during the preceding winter, of Burns' 
predilection for convivial and not very select so- 
ciety, I should have concluded in favour of his ha- 
bits of sobriety, from all of him that ever fell under 
my own observation." 

Nor is the testimony of Professor Walker less de- 



120 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

cided; for him, as well as for Burns, Doon had 
poured all her floods — the rising sun had glinted 
gloriously over Galston Moors, and snow had lain 
untrodden on the hills of Ochiltree : he was a native 
of Kyle, and interested in all that added to its re- 
nown. " In conversation Burns was powerful, his 
conceptions and expressions were of corresponding 
vigour, and on all subjects were as remote as pos- 
sible from common-place. Though somewhat au- 
thoritative, it was in a way that gave little offence, 
and was readily imputed to his inexperience in those 
modes of smoothing dissent and softening assertion, 
which are important characteristics of polished man- 
ners. After breakfast I requested him to commu- 
nicate some of his unpublished pieces, and he re- 
cited his farewell song to the Banks of Ayr, intro- 
ducing it with a description of the circumstances in 
which it was composed, more striking than the poem 
itself. He had left Dr. Laurie's family, and on his 
way home had to cross a wide stretch of solitary 
moor. His mind was strongly affected by parting 
for ever with a scene where he had tasted so much 
elegant and social pleasure. The aspect of nature 
harmonized with his feelings— -it was a lowering and 
heavy evening ; the wind was up, and whistled 
through the rushes and long spear-grass which bent 
before it ; the clouds were driven across the sky, 
and cold pelting showers, at intervals, added dis- 
comfort of body to cheerlessness of mind. His re- 
citation was plain, slow, articulate, and forcible, but 
without any eloquence or art. He did not always 
lay the emphasis with propriety, nor did he humour 
the sentiment by the variations of his voice." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 121 

As Heron — a man who rose by the force of his 
talents, and fell by the keenness of his passions — is 
the least favourable to the Poet of all his biogra- 
phers, we may quote him without fear : — " The con- 
versation of Burns was, in comparison with the 
formal and exterior circumstances of his education, 
perhaps even more wonderful than his poetry. He 
affected no soft airs or graceful motions of polite- 
ness, which might have ill accorded with the rustic 
plainness of his native manners. Conscious supe- 
riority of mind taught him to associate with the 
great, the learned, and the gay, without being over- 
awed into any such bashfulness as might have made 
him confused in thought or hesitating in elocution. 
In conversation he displayed a sort of intuitive 
quickness and rectitude of judgment upon every 
subject that arose ; the sensibility of his heart and 
the vivacity of his fancy gave a rich colouring to 
whatever reasoning he was disposed to advance, and 
his language in conversation was not at all less 
happy than his writings ; for these reasons he did 
not fail to please immediately after having been first 
seen. I remember that the late Dr. Robertson once 
observed to me, that he had scarcely ever met with 
any man whose conversation ■ discovered greater 
vigour and activity of mind than that of Burns." 

The more generous looked with wonder on the 
bold Peasant, who had claimed and taken place with 
the foremost, and who seemed to have endowments 
of every kind equal to his ambition ; while other 
geniuses, raised by the artificial heat of colleges and 
schools, glanced with scorn or envy on one who had 
sprung into fame through the genial warmth of 



122 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 



nature. Henry Mackenzie was not of the latter ; 
as soon as he read the poems of Burns, he perceived 
that the right inspiration was in them, and recom- 
mended them and their author to public notice, in 
a paper in The Lounger, written with feeling and 
truth. His poems discover a tone of feeling, a 
power and energy of expression, particularly and 
strongly characteristic of the mind and voice of 
a poet. The critic perceives, too, passages solemn 
and sublime, touched, and that not slightly, with 
a rapt and inspired melancholy : together with sen- 
timents tender, and moral, and elegiac. Of " The 
Daisy," he says, " I have seldom met with an image 
more truly pastoral than that of the lark in the 
second stanza. Such strokes as these mark the 
pencil of the poet which delineates nature with the 
precision of intimacy, yet with the delicate colouring 
of beauty and of taste. Burns possesses the spirit 
as well as the fancy of a poet ; that honest pride 
and independence of soul which are sometimes the 
muses' only dower break forth on every occasion in 
his works." The criticism struck the true note of 
his peculiar genius, and with something like pre- 
science, claimed the honours of " National Poet," 
which have since been so strongly conceded." 

This was regarded by some as not a little rash on 
the part of Mackenzie ; the rustic harp of Scotland 
had not been for centuries swept by a hand so 
forcible and free ; the language was that of humble 
life, the scenes were the clay-cottage, the dusty barn, 
and the stubble-field, and the characters the clouterly 
children of the penfold and the plough. There was 
nothing . in the new prodigy which could be called 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 123 

classic, little which those who looked through the 
vista of a college reckoned poetical ; and his verses 
were deemed rather the effusions of a random 
rhymer than a true poet. Speaking from his heart, 
Mackenzie spoke right ; and in claiming for Burns 
the honours due to the elect in song, he did a good 
deed for genius. The Poet now stood at the head 
of northern song, and with historians, and philo- 
sophers, and critics applauding, he looked upon 
himself as " owned " by the best judges of his 
country. 

The well-timed kindness of Mackenzie was never 
forgotten by Burns ; from this time he prized the 
Man of Feeling as a book next in worth to the 
Bible ; he never mentioned the author save in terms 
of affectionate admiration, and ranked him among 
his benefactors : — 

" Mackenzie, Stewart, sic a brace 
As Rome ne'er saw." 

He felt his high, and, to his fancy, dangerous ele- 
vation : — " You are afraid," he thus writes, January 
15, 1787, to Mrs. Dunlop, " I shall grow intoxicated 
with my prosperity as a poet. Alas ! madam, I know 
myself and the world too well. I do not put on any 
airs of affected modesty ; I am willing to believe that 
my abilities deserve some notice ; but in a most 
enlightened age and nation, when poetry is and has 
been the study of men of the first natural genius, 
aided with all the powers of polite learning, polite 
books, and polite company, to be dragged forth to 
the full glare of learned and polite observation, with 
all my imperfections of awkward rusticity and crude 
unpolished ideas on my head ! I have studied my- 



124 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

self, and know what ground I occupy ; and, however 
a friend or the world may differ from me in that par- 
ticular, I stand for my own opinion in silent resolve, 
with all the tenaciousness of property. I mention 
this to you once for all to disburthen my mind, and 
I do not wish to hear or say more about it ; but 
" when proud fortune's ebbing tide recedes," you 
will bear me witness that, when my bubble of fame 
was at the highest, I stood unintoxicated with the 
inebriating cup in my hand, looking forward, with 
rueful resolve, to the hastening time when the blow 
of calumny should dash it to the ground with all the 
eagerness of vengeful triumph." 

The Poet speaks, about the same time, in a similar 
strain to the Rev. Mr. Laurie, who, it seems, had 
warned him to beware of vanity, and of prosperity's 
spiced cup. A tone of despondency, too, is visible 
in his letters to Dr. Moore : — " Not many months 
ago," he observes, " I knew no other employment 
than following the plough, nor could boast anything 
higher than a distant acquaintance with a country 
clergyman. Mere greatness never embarrasses me ; 
I have nothing to ask from the great, and I do not 
fear their judgment ; but genius, polished by learn- 
ing, and at its proper point of elevation in the eye of 
the world, this, of late, I frequently meet with, and 
tremble at its approach. I scorn the affectation of 
seeming modesty to cover self-conceit. That I 
have some merit I do not deny ; but I see, with 
frequent wringings of heart, that the novelty of my 
character, and the honest national prejudice of my 
countrymen, have borne me to a height altogether 
untenable to my abilities." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 125 

Burns indicates the station to which he must soon 
descend still more plainly to another correspondent. 
The Eari of Buchan had advised him to visit the 
battle-fields of Caledonia, and, firing his fancy with 
deeds wrought by heroes, pour their deathless 
names in song. When the prophet retired to medi- 
tate in the desert, he was miraculously fed by 
ravens ; but the peer forgot to say how the poet 
was to be fed when musing on the fields of Stir- 
ling, Falkirk, and Bannockburn. That Heaven 
would send food while he produced song, seems 
not to have entered into his mind : for he says — 
" My Lord — in the midst of these enthusiastic re- 
veries, a long-visaged, dry, moral-looking phantom 
strides across my imagination, and pronounces these 
emphatic words : — ' I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence. 
Friend, I do not come to open the ill-closed wounds 
of your follies and misfortunes merely to give you 
pain. I have given you line upon line, and precept 
upon precept ; and while I was chalking out to you 
the straight way to wealth and character, with 
audacious effrontery you have zig-zagged across the 
path, contemning me to my face. You know the 
consequences. Now that your dear-loved Scotia 
puts it in your power to return to the situation of 
your forefathers, will you follow these will-o'-wisp 
meteors of fancy and whim, till they bring you once 
more to the brink of ruin ? I grant that the utmost 
ground you can occupy is but half a step from the 
veriest poverty — still it is half a step from it. You 
know how you feel at the iron gripe of ruthless 
oppression — you know how you bear the galling 
sneer of contumelious greatness. I hold you out 



126 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the comforts of life, independence, and character, on 
the one hand ; I tender you servility, dependence, and 
wretchedness on the other. I will not insult your 
understanding by bidding you make a choice.' " 

He intimated his intention of returning to the 
plough still more publicly, when, in the new edition 
of his works, April, 1787, he thus addressed the 
noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland : — " The poetic 
genius of my country found me as the prophetic 
bard Elijah did Elisha — at the plough — and threw 
her inspiring mantle over me. She bade me sing 
the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural plea- 
sures of my natal soil in my native tongue. I tuned 
my wild artless notes as she inspired. She whis- 
pered me to come to this ancient metropolis of 
Caledonia, and lay my songs under your honoured 
protection. I do not approach you, my lords and 
gentlemen, in the usual style of dedication to thank 
you for past favours-; that path is so hackneyed by 
prostituted learning, that honest rusticity is ashamed 
of it. Nor do I present this address with the venal 
soul of a servile author looking for a continuation 
of those favours. I was bred to the plough, and 
am independent.'' This bold language sounded 
strangely in noble ears. It was set down by some 
as approaching to arrogance — was regarded by others 
as the cant of independence ; or considered by a few 
as rude and vulgar, and remembered when the Poet 
looked for some better acknowledgment of his ge- 
nius than a six-shilling subscription, or an invitation 
to dine. Silence, perhaps, would have been best ; 
but if it were necessary to speak, I cannot see that 
he could have spoken better. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 127 

The Poet spent the winter and spring of 1787 in 
Edinburgh, much after his own heart ; he loved 
company, and was not unwilling to shew that na- 
ture sometimes bestowed gifts against which rank 
and education could scarcely make good their sta- 
tion. This was, perhaps, the un wisest course he 
could have pursued : a man with ten thousand a 
year will always be considered by the world around 
superior to a man whose wealth lies in his genius ; 
the dullest can estimate what landed property is 
worth, but who can say what is the annual value of 
an estate which lies in the imagination ? In fame 
there was no rivalry ; and in station, what hope had 
a poet with the earth of his last turned furrow still 
red on his shoon, to rival the Montgomerys, the 
Hamiltons, and the Gordons, with counties for 
estates, and the traditional eclat of a thousand 
years accompanying them ? In the sight of the 
great and the far-descended, he was still a farmer, 
for whom the Grass-market was the proper scene of 
action, and the husbandmen of the land the proper 
companions ; his company was sought, not from a 
sense that genius had raised him to an equality with 
lords and earls, but from a wish to see how this 
wild man of the west would behave himself in the 
presence of ladies plumed and jewelled, and lords 
clothed in all the terrors of their wealth and titles. 

The beautiful Duchess of Gordon was, in those 
days, at the head of fashion at Edinburgh ; a wit 
herself, with some taste for music and poetry ; she 
sought the acquaintance of Burns, and invited him 
to her parties. Lord Monboddo, equally accom- 
plished and whimsical, gave parties, after what he 



128 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

called the classic fashion ; he desired to revive the 
splendid suppers of the ancients, and placed on his 
tables the choicest wines, in decanters of a Grecian 
pattern, adorned with wreaths of flowers : painting 
lent its attraction as well as music, while odours 
of all kinds were diffused from visible or invisible 
sources. Into scenes of this kind, and into com- 
pany coldly polite and sensitively ceremonious, the 
brawny Bard of Doon, equally rash of speech and 
unceremonious in conduct, precipitated himself; 
but rich wines and lovely women, like the touch of 
the goddess which rendered Ulysses acceptable in 
the sight of a princess, brightened up the looks of 
the Poet, and inspired his tongue with that conquer- 
ing eloquence which pleased fastidious ladies. In 
fine company, where it was imagined he would have 
failed, he triumphed. The fame of all these doings 
flew into Ayrshire. — " There is a great rumour here," 
said one of his friends, " concerning your intimacy 
with the Duchess of Gordon ; I am really told 
that 

" Cards to invite fly by thousands each night;'' 

and if you had one, I suppose there would be also 
1 bribes for your old secretary.' It seems that you 
are resolved to make hay while the sun shines, 
a good maxim to thrive by ; you seemed to de- 
spise it while in this country, but probably some 
philosopher in Edinburgh has taught you better 
sense." 

Of his own feelings on these occasions the Poet 
has said but little : Lord Monboddo's table had 
other attractions than wine called Falernian, and 
dishes like those praised in Latin verse. The 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 129 

beauty of his daughter is celebrated by Burns both 
in prose and poetry — 

" Fair Burnet strikes the adoring eye, 

Heaven's beauties on my fancy shine; 
I see the Sire of Love on high, 
And own his work indeed divine." 

" I enclose you," he says to his friend Chalmers, 
" two poems which I have carded and spun since I 
passed Glenbuck. One blank in the Address to 
Edinburgh ' Fair B — ' is the heavenly Miss Burnet, 
daughter of Lord Monboddo, at whose house I have 
had the honour to be more than once. There has 
not been any thing nearly like her in ail the combin- 
ations of beauty, grace, and goodness, the great 
Creator has formed since Milton's Eve, on the first 
day of her existence." 

Those who were afraid that amid feasting and 
flattery — the smiles of ladies and the applauding nods 
of their lords — Burns would forget himself, and 
allow the mercury of vanity to rise too high within 
him, indulged in idle fears. When he dined or 
supped with the magnates of the land, he never 
wanted a monitor to warn him of the humility of his 
condition. When the company arose in the gilded 
and illuminated rooms, some of the fair guests — 
perhaps 

"Her grace, 
Whose flambeaux flash against the morning skies, 
And gild our chamber ceilings as they pass," 

took the hesitating arm of the Bard ; went smiling 
to her coach, waved a graceful good-night with her 
jewelled hand, and, departing to her mansion, left 
him in the middle of the street to grope his way 
through the dingy alleys of the " gude town" to his 
obscure lodging, with his share of a deal table, a 

VOL. I. k 



130 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

sanded floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteen pence a 
week. That his eyes were partly open to this we 
know ; but he did not perceive that these invitations 
arose from a wish to relieve the ennui of a supper- 
table, where the guests were all too well-bred to 
utter any thing strikingly original or boldly witty. 
Had Burns beheld the matter in this light, he would 
have sprung up like Wat Tinlinn when touched 
with the elfin bodkin ; and overturning silver dishes, 
garlanded decanters, and shoving opposing ladies 
and staring lords aside, made his way to the plough- 
tail, and recommenced turning the furrows upon 
his cold and ungenial farm of Mossgiel. — " I have 
formed many intimacies and friendships here," he 
observes, in a letter to Dr. Moore ; " but lam afraid 
they are all of a too tender construction to bear 
carriage a hundred and fifty miles. To the rich, the 
great, the fashionable, the polite, I have no equi- 
valent to offer ; and I am afraid my meteor appear- 
ance will by no means entitle me to a settled corres- 
pondence with any of you, who are the permanent 
lights of genius and literature. " In these words he 
expressed his fears : they were prophetic. 

While his volume was passing through the press, 
he added " The Brigs of Ayr" the " Address to 
Edinburgh," and one or two songs and small pieces. 
The first poem, " The Brigs of Ayr," seems to have 
been written for the two-fold purpose of giving a 
picture of old times and new, and honouring in 
rhyme those who befriended him on the banks of 
Doon ; and, like Ballantyne, to whom it is inscribed, 
had 

" Handed the rustic stranger up to fame." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 131 

There were two poems which some of his friends 
begged him to exclude from his new volume. On the 
score of delicacy, they requested the omission of 
" The Louse ;" and on that of loyalty and propriety, 
" The Dream." He defended the former, because of 
the moral with which the poem concludes, and main- 
tained the propriety of the latter with such wit and 
indiscretion, that cautious divines and cool professors 
shrugged their shoulders, and talked of the folly of 
the sons of song. Mrs. Duniop seems to have taken 
the matter much to heart. — " Your criticisms, ma- 
dam," says the Poet, nettled a little by her remon- 
strance, " I understand very well, and could have 
wished to have pleased you better. You are right 
in your guess that I am not very amenable to coun- 
sel ; I set as little by princes, lords, clergy, and 
critics, as all those respective gentry do by my bard- 
ship. I know what I may expect from the world 
by-and-bye — illiberal abuse, and, perhaps, con- 
temptuous neglect." 

In this sarcastic Dream there was much to amuse 
and more to incense a king who endured advice as 
little as he did contradiction. The life of George 
the Third was pure and blameless ; but the young 
princes of his house had already commenced their 
gay and extravagant courses. The song of the Bard 
is prophetic of the two elder ones : — 

" For you, young Potentate of Wales, 

I tell your Highness fairly, 
Down pleasure's stream, wi' swelling sails, 

I'm tauld ye're driving rarely ; 
But some day ye may gnaw yere nails, 

An' curse your folly sairly, 
That e'er ye brake Diana's pales, 

Or rattled dice wi' Charlie. 

k2 



132 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" For you, Right Reverend Osnaburg, 
Nane sets the lawn-sleeve better, 
Although a ribbon at your lug 
Wad been a dress completer : 
As ye disown yon paughty dog 
That bears the keys o' Peter, 
Then swith ! an' get a wife to hug, 
Or trouth ye'll stain the mitre." 

The " Address to Edinburgh" contains some noble 
verses. I have heard the description of the castle 
praised by one, whose genius all but exempted him 
from error : — 

" There, watching high, the least alarms 

Thy rough rude fortress gleams afar, 
Like some bold veteran, gray in arms, 

And marked with many a seamy scar : 
The ponderous wall and massy bar, 

Grim-rising o'er the rugged rock, 
Have oft withstood assailing War, 

And oft repelled the invader's shock." 

When Burns told Mrs. Dunlop that he was de- 
termined to natter no created being, she might have 
smiled ; for in his " Earnest Cry and Prayer," he 
scattered praise as profusely as ever he scattered 
corn over his new-turned furrows. He who could 
see Demosthenes and Cicero in half-a-dozen nor- 
thern members of Parliament, was inclined to natter : 
Dempster, Cunningham, the Campbells, — 

" And ane, a chap that's damned auld-farran, 
Dundas his name," 

were respectable debaters, but not eloquent. " Ers- 
kine, a spunkie Norland billie," came nearer to the 
comparison, and almost reconciles us to the lavish 
waste of honours on the others. 

Burns's taste, which in all things resembled his 
genius, was almost always correct: he depended on its 
accuracy, and, as he used no words at random, was 
unwilling to alter aught. In the " Cotter's Saturday 
Night" he called Wallace the " unhappy," in allusion 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 133 

to his fate ; he hesitated now to change the word to 
'* undaunted," in compliance with the criticism of 
Mrs. Dunlop. — " Your friendly advice," he says to 
that lady, " I will not give it the cold name of criti- 
cism, I receive with reverence. I have made some 
small alterations in what I before had printed. I 
have the advice of some very judicious friends among 
the literati here : but with them I sometimes find it 
necessary to claim the privilege of thinking for my- 
self. The noble Earl of Glencairn, to whom I owe 
more than to any man, does me the honour of giving 
me his strictures ; his hints, with respect to impro- 
priety or indelicacy, I follow implicitly." 

During the spring he sat to Alexander Nasmyth 
for his portrait ; it was engraved by Beugo, whose 
boast it was that he had added to the merit of the 
likeness by inducing Burns to give him a sitting or 
two while he touched up the plate. He also al- 
lowed his profile to be taken in small : the brow is 
low, the hair hangs over it, and there is a short queue 
behind. The portrait by Nasmyth is the best, though 
wanting a little in massive vigour and the look of 
inspiration. He sat to whoever desired him, nor 
seemed to be aware that genius went to such works 
as well as to the manufacture of rhyme. He took 
pleasure in presenting proof impressions of this por- 
trait to his friends : sometimes the gift was accom- 
panied by verse, and it has been remarked that he 
imagined he looked very well on paper, and ex- 
pected some notice to be taken of his face as well as 
of his poetry. 

Of his verse, indeed, the notice was not always 
taken that he desired. On the death of Dundas of 



134 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Arniston, Lord President of the Court of Session, 
he wrote a " Lamentation," forty lines in length. 
There are vigorous passages ; the Poet affects an 
excess of grief ; he complains to the hills, the plains, 
and the tempests of the too early removal of one 
who redressed wrongs, restrained violence, defeated 
fraud, and protected innocence. He copied the 
poem into a volume now before me, and presented it 
to Dr. Geddes, with the following note, describing the 
success of his " Lamentation." — " The foregoing 
poem has some tolerable lines in it, but the in- 
curable wound of my pride will not suffer me to 
correct or even peruse it. I sent a copy of it with 
my best prose letter to the son of the great man, the 
theme of the piece, by the hands, too, of one of the 
noblest men in God's world, Alex. Wood, surgeon ; 
when, behold ! his solicitorship took no more notice 
of my poem or me than I had been a strolling fiddler 
who had made free with his lady's name over the 
head of a silly new reel ! Did he think I looked for 
any dirty gratuity?" 

Some of the anecdotes related of the Poet and his 
proof-sheets are amusing enough. When he had 
made up his mind to retain a line in the words of 
its original inspiration — such as, " When I look 
back on prospects drear," — he stated his reasons 
briefly for refusing to make any change, and then 
sat, like his own heroine, " deaf as Ailsa Crag " to 
all persuasion or remonstrance. Nor did he lose his 
serenity of mind, though the way in which he un- 
consciously, perhaps, crumpled up the sheet in his 
hand till he almost made it illegible, shewed what 
was passing within him. It was on one of these 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 135 

occasions that a clergyman, stung with the irrev- 
erent way that Burns had handled the cloth in 
some of his earlier pieces, hazarded some stern 
remarks on the " Holy Fair;" not, he said, but 
that the poem was a clever picture, he only wished 
to shew that it was not constructed according to the 
true rules of composition. The reverend censor did 
not acquit himself well in his perilous undertaking : 
the eye of the Poet began to lighten, and his lips to 
give a sort of twitching announcement that some- 
thing sarcastic was coming. All present looked to- 
wards him ; he spoke as they expected, saying, " No, 
by heaven, I'll not touch him— 

' Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.' " 

— " I'll find you as apt a quotation as that/' said the 
aggressor, " and from a poet whom I love more — 

■ Corbies and Clergy are a shot right kittle.' " 

Burns laughed, held out his hand, saying, " Then 
we are friends again." 

He did not always come off so happily : on an- 
other occasion, Cromek tells us, that at a breakfast 
where a number of the literati were present, a critic, 
one of those fond of seeming very acute and wise, 
undertook to prove that Gray's Elegy in a Country 
Church-yard violated the essential rules of verse, and 
transgressed against true science, to x which he held 
true poetry to be amenable. He failed, however, in 
explaining the nature of his scientific gauge, and he 
also failed in quoting the lines correctly, which he 
proposed to censure ; upon which Burns exclaimed 
with great vehemence, " Sir, you have proved 
enough — you have proved that a man may be a good 



136 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

judge of poetry by square and rule, and, after all, a 
profound blockhead." 

One of those critical scenes is well described by 
Professor Walker, who happened to be present ; 
it occurred, at the table of Dr. Blair, who was fond 
of hearing the Poet read his own verses. — " The 
aversion of Burns," he observes, " to adopt altera- 
tions which were proposed to him, after having 
fully satisfied his own taste, is apparent from his 
letters. In one passage, he says that he never ac- 
cepted any of the corrections of the Edinburgh 
Literati, except in the instance of a single word. If 
his admirers should be desirous to know this ' single 
word/ I am able to gratify them, as I happened to 
be present when the criticism was made. It was 
at the table of a gentleman of literary celebrity (Dr. 
Blair), who observed, that in two lines of the 6 Holy 
Fair,' beginning — 

1 For Moodie speels the holy door, 
Wi' tidings of salvation.' 

The last word, from his description of the preacher, 
ought to be damnation. This change, both embit- 
tering the satire, and introducing a word to which 
Burns had no dislike, met with his instant enthu- 
siastic approbation. ' Excellent !' he exclaimed with 
great warmth, i the alteration shall be made, and I 
hope you will allow me to say in a note, from whose 
suggestion it proceeds ;' a request which the critic 
with great good humour, but with equal decision, 
refused." The Poet had not yet discovered what was 
due to clerical decorum. I must copy another of 
Professor Walker's pictures of the Poet and the 
Edinburgh Literati : — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 137 

11 The day after my introduction to Burns," says 
the Professor, " I supped in company with him at 
Dr. Blair's. The other guests were very few ; and 
as each had "been invited chiefly to have an oppor- 
tunity of meeting with the Poet, the Doctor endea- 
voured to draw him out, and make him the central 
figure of the groupe. Though he, therefore, furnished 
the greatest proportion of the conversation, he did no 
more than what he saw evidently was expected. Men 
of genius have often been taxed with a proneness to 
commit blunders in company, from that ignorance or 
negligence of the laws of conversation which must be 
imputed to the absorption of their thoughts on a 
favourite subject, or to the want of that daily prac- 
tice in attending to the petty modes of behaviour 
which is incompatible with a studious life. From 
singularities of this sort, Burns was unusually free : 
yet, on the present occasion, he made a more awk- 
ward slip than any that are reported of the poets or 
mathematicians most noted for absence. Being 
asked from which of the public places he had re- 
ceived the greatest gratification, he named the high 
church, but gave the preference as a preacher to 
(the Rev. Robert Walker) the colleague (and most 
formidable rival) of our worthy entertainer — whose 
celebrity rested on his pulpit eloquence — in a tone 
so pointed and decisive as to throw the whole com- 
pany into the most foolish embarrassment. The 
Doctor, indeed, with becoming self-command, en- 
deavoured to relieve the rest by cordially seconding 
the encomium so injudiciously introduced ; but this 
did not prevent the conversation from labouring 
under that compulsory effort which was unavoidable, 



138 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

while the thoughts of all were full of the only sub- 
ject on which it was improper to speak. Of this 
blunder Burns must instantly have been aware, but 
he shewed the return of good sense by making no 
attempt to repair it. His secret mortification was 
indeed so great, that he never mentioned the circum- 
stance until many years after, when he told me that 
his silence had proceeded from the pain which he 
felt in recalling it to his memory." 

It must be mentioned to the honour of Blair, that 
this mortifying blunder had no influence over his 
well-regulated mind, and that he appears from his 
correspondence to have augmented rather than 
lessened his kindness for the Poet ; the strong 
sense of propriety which is visible in all that Blair 
ever said or wrote preserved him from this : yet he 
probably thought of the Poet's preference when he 
first saw the fragment beginning, 

" When Guilford good our pilot stood ;" 

and said, " Burns's politics always smell of the 
smithy.'' The Bard disapproved of the war waged 
with America ; the world at large has shared in his 
feelings, and the sarcasm of the Doctor falls harm- 
less on this little hasty, though not very happy pro- 
duction. It was likely to Blair that Burns glanced 
when, in reply to the question if the critical literati 
of Edinburgh had aided him with their opinions, — 
" The best of these gentlemen," said he, " are like 
the wife's daughter in the west — they spin the thread 
of their criticism so fine, that it is fit for neither warp 
nor waft." He was never at a loss for illustrations 
drawn from domestic life or rural affairs. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 139 

Towards the close of April the subscription 
volume 

«« On wings of wind came flying all abroad," 

and was widely and warmly welcomed. All that 
coterie influence and individual exertion — all that 
the noblest or the humblest could do, was done to 
aid in giving it a kind reception ; Creech, too, had 
announced it through the booksellers of the land, 
and it was soon diffused over the country, over the 
colonies, and wherever the language was spoken. 
The literary men of the south seemed even to fly a 
flight beyond those of the north. Some hesitated 
not to call him the northern Shakspeare ; criticism 
at that period had not usurped the throne, and as- 
sumed the functions of genius ; reviews were few in 
number, and moderate in influence, and followed 
opinion rather than led it. Had he lived in a latter 
day, with what a triumphant air of superiority the 
two leading critical journals would have crushed 
him ! They would have agreed in that, though in 
nothing else, to trample down a spirit which wrote 
not as they wrote, and felt not as they felt ; they 
would have assumed the air of high philosophy and 
searching science, and buried him as he did the 
Daisy under the weight of a deep-drawn critical 
furrow. The Whig of the north would have pounced 
on his poetical jacobitism ; the Tory of the south 
upon his love of freedom ; and both would have 
tossed him to the meaner hounds of the kennel of 
criticism after they had dissected the soul and heart 
out of him. Much of this these journals tried to do 
at a later period, when the Poet was low in the 



140 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

dust, and his fame as high as Heaven, and beyond 
their rancour or their spite. 

While Burns lodged with his Mauchline friend, 
Richmond, he kept good hours and sober company. 
In the course of the spring he became acquainted 
with William Nicol, one of the masters of the High- 
school, who lived in the Buccleugh-road, and found 
more suitable accommodation under his roof. This 
has been considered as a symptom that the keeping 
of good hours was growing irksome. The poverty 
of the Poet made him live frugally — nay, meanly, 
when he arrived in Edinburgh ; but when money 
came pouring in, and gentlemen of note called on 
him, it did not become him to remain in an apart- 
ment of which he had but a share. I see little harm 
in this, or proof of increasing irregularity. Nicol, 
it is true, was of a quick, fierce temper — loose and 
wavering in religious opinions — fond of social com- 
pany, and now and then indulged in excesses, 
though his situation required sobriety. Lockhart, 
who charges the imputed irregularities of Burns on 
the example of Nicol, supports his conclusion by 
the testimony of Heron. But Heron is a doubt- 
ful evidence ; he was himself not only inclined to 
gross sensual indulgence, but has been regarded as 
one not at all solicitous about the truth. — " The 
enticements of pleasure," says Heron, " too often 
unman our virtuous resolution, even while we wear 
the air of rejecting them with a stern brow. We re- 
sist, and resist, and resist ; but at last suddenly 
turn and embrace the enchantress. The bucks of 
Edinburgh accomplished, in regard to Burns, that 
in which the boors of Ayrshire had failed. After 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 141 

residing some months in Edinburgh, he began to 
estrange himself, not altogether, but in some mea- 
sure, from graver friends. Too many of his hours 
were now spent at the tables of persons who de- 
lighted to urge conviviality to drunkenness." He- 
ron knew not what resolutions Burns formed, nor 
how much he resisted : and to push conviviality to 
intoxication was common in those days at the tables 
of the gentlemen of the north. The entertainer set 
down the quantity to be drunk, locked the door, 
put the key in his pocket, and the guests had either 
to swallow all his wine, or fill the landlord tipsy, 
steal the key and escape. 

Though Burns had expressed doubts to Lord 
Buchan on the prudence of a pennyless poet visit- 
ing the battle-fields, and fine natural scenery of 
Scotland, and intimated to many of his friends his 
resolution to return to the plough ; he longed to 
pull broom on the Cowden-knowes, look at the 
Birks on the Braes of Yarrow, and see whether 
Flora smiled as sweetly on the Tweed as Crawford 
had represented. On the third of May he wrote to 
Dr. Blair — " I leave Edinburgh to-morrow morning, 
but could not go without troubling you with half a 
line, sincerely to thank you for the kindness, pa- 
tronage and friendship which you have shown me." 
The Doctor answered the farewell at once, and his 
words weigh those of Heron to the dust. — " Your 
situation was indeed very singular ; and, being 
brought out all at once from the shades of deepest 
privacy to so great a share of public notice and ob- 
servation, you had to stand a severe trial. I am 
happy you have stood it so well ; and, as far as I 



142 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

have known or heard — though in the midst of many 
temptations — without reproach to your character and 
behaviour. You are now, I presume, to retire to a 
more private walk of life, and I trust you will con- 
duct yourself there with industry, prudence, and 
honour. You have laid the foundation for just 
public esteem. In the midst of those employments 
which your situation will render proper, you will 
not, I hope, neglect to promote that esteem by cul- 
tivating your genius, and attending to such produc- 
tions of it, as may raise your character still higher. 
At the same time, be not in too great haste to come 
forward. Take time and leisure to improve and 
mature your talents ; for, on any second production 
you give the world, your fate, as a poet, will very 
much depend." Burns, it is said, received this 
letter when about to mount his horse on his Border 
excursion ; he read as far as I have transcribed, 
then crumpled up the communication, and thrust- 
ing it into his pocket, exclaimed, " Kindly said, 
Doctor; but a man's first-born book is often like 
his first-born babe — healthier and stronger than 
those which follow." In this mood he quitted 
Edinburgh, after a residence of five months and 
some odd days. 

Burns was accompanied in this tour by Robert 
Ainslie, a young gentleman of talents and education, 
whose friendship his genius had procured, and who 
is still living to enjoy the esteem and some of the 
applause of the world, The Poet directed his course 
byLammermoor — whose hills he pronounced dreary 
in general, but at times picturesque — through 
Peebles, where he chanted a stave of the old song of 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 143 

11 The Wife of Peebles ; " passed Coldstream, where 
he thought of Monk and his " reformadoe saints/' 
and from Lanton-Edge gazed on the Merse, which 
he pronounced " glorious/' 

Of this tour, Burns kept a journal ; it is now 
before me : the entries are brief, but generally to the 
point. — " May 6. Reach Berry well ; old Mr. Ainslie 
an uncommon character ; his hobbies, agriculture, 
natural philosophy, and politics. In the first, he is 
unexceptionably the clearest-headed, best-informed 
man I ever met with ; in the other two, very intel- 
ligent. Mrs. Ainslie, an excellent, sensible, cheerful* 
amiable woman. Miss Ainslie, her person a little 
en bon point, but handsome, her face particularly ; 
her eyes full of sweetness and good humour. She 
unites three qualities rarely to be found together : 
keen penetration, sly witty observation and remark, 
and the gentlest, most unaffected female modesty." 
Here he met with the author of " The Maid that 
tends the Goats," of whom he says, — " Mr. Dud- 
geon — a poet at times, a worthy, remarkable char- 
acter, natural penetration, a great deal of informa- 
tion, some genius, and extreme modesty." In the 
pulpit of Dunse church, he found a character of 
another stamp. — " Dr. Bowmaker, a man of strong 
lungs, and pretty judicious remark," who preached a 
sermon against " obstinate sinners." " I am found 
out/' whispered the Poet to a friend, " wherever 
I go." 

On reaching the Tweed, Ainslie requested Burns 
to pass the stream, that he might say he had been 
in England. The following brief entry is all the 
memoranda he makes of this event : — " Coldstream 



144 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

— went over to England — glorious river Tweed, 
clear and majestic." His companion has enabled 
me to complete the picture. — " As soon as the Poet 
reached the English side he took off his hat, knelt 
down, and with extreme emotion, and a countenance 
rapt and inspired, prayed for, and blest Scotland, by 
pronouncing aloud the two concluding verses of 
" The Cotter's Saturday Night." At Lenel-House 
he drank tea with Brydone the traveller ; of this he 
makes a brief record. — " Mr. Brydone is a man of 
an excellent heart, kind, joyous, and benevolent ; 
but from his situation, past and present, an admirer 
of every thing that bears a splendid title, or that 
possesses a large estate ; Mrs. Brydone, a most 
elegant woman in her person and manners ; the tones 
of her voice remarkably sweet." He slept at Cold- 
stream, and then proceeded to Kelso, of which he 
pronounced the situation charming. — " There are," 
said he, " enchanting views and prospects on both 
sides of the river, particularly the Scotch side." 

He walked on to the ruins of Roxburgh Castle ; 
and wrote in his journal : — " A holly-bush growing 
where James II. of Scotland was accidentally killed 
by the bursting of a cannon. A small old religious 
ruin, and a fine' old garden planted by the religious, 
rooted out and destroyed by an English Hottentot, 
a maitre d' hotel of the duke's, a Mr. Cole. Climate 
and soil of Berwickshire, and even Roxburgshire, 
superior to Ayrshire ; turnip and sheep husbandry 
their great improvements. Mr. M'Dowal of Caver- 
ton-Mill, sold his sheep, ewe and lamb together, at 
two guineas a piece. They wash their sheep before 
shearing ; seven or eight pounds of washen wool in 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 145 

a fleece. Low markets, consequently low rents ; fine 
lands not above sixteen shillings a Scotch acre : 
magnificence of farmers and farm-houses." On his 
way up the Tiviot and the Jed, he visited an old 
gentleman, whose boast it was that he possessed an 
arm-chair which had belonged to Thomson the 
poet. Burns reverently examined the relique, 
could scarcely be prevailed to sit in it, and seemed 
to feel inspiration from its touch. 

In Jedburgh, the Poet found much to interest 
him. — " Go about two miles out of the town to a 
roup of parks ; meet a polite soldier-like gentleman, 
a Captain Rutherford, who had been many years in 
the wilds of America, a prisoner among the Indians. 
Charming romantic situation of Jedburgh, with gar- 
dens and orchards intermingled among the houses. 
Fine old ruins ; a once magnificent cathedral and 
strong castle. All the towns here have the appear- 
ance of old rude grandeur, but the people extremely 
idle. Jed, a fine romantic little river." Burns dined 
with Captain Rutherford ; returned to Jedburgh, 
was introduced to Mr. Potts, writer, whom he pro- 
nounced a clever man ; and to Mr. Somerville, the 
minister of the place ; "a man," said he, " and a 
gentleman, but sadly addicted to punning.'' 

Here he met with something not unlike a love 
adventure : in one of his walks he was accompanied 
by several ladies : — " Miss Hope, a pretty girl, fond 
of laughing and fun ; Miss Lindsay, a good- 
humoured, amiable girl, handsome, and extremely 
graceful ; beautiful hazel eyes full of spirit, and 
sparkling with delicious moisture ; an engaging 
face, un tout ensemble, that speaks her ef the first 

VOL. i. l 



146 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

order of female minds ; her sister, a bonny strappan, 
rosy, sonsie lass." The poet would, perhaps, have 
contented himself with silently admiring this dan- 
gerous companion ; but two venerable spinsters 
persecuted him so with their conversation, that he 
took refuge with Miss Lindsay, who was touched, 
as he imagined, with his attentions. — " My heart," 
he says in his record, " is thawed into melting plea- 
sure after being so long frozen up in the Greenland 
bay of indifference, amid the noise and nonsense of 
Edinburgh. Noia Bene. — The Poet within a point 
and a half of being damnably in love ; I am afraid 
my bosom is still nearly as much tinder as ever ; I 
find Miss Lindsay would soon play the devil with 
me/' He seems ready to burst into song as he pro- 
ceeds with his journal. " Took farewell of Jedburgh 
with some melancholy, disagreeable sensations. Jed, 
pure be thy chrystal streams, and hallowed thy 
sylvan banks ! Sweet Isabella Lindsay, may peace 
dwell in thy bosom uninterrupted, except by the 
tumultuous throbbings of rapturous love ! That 
love-enkindling eye must beam oh another, not on 
me : that graceful form must bless another's arms, 
not mine." Before he departed he gave this young 
lady a present of his portrait, and was waited on by 
the magistrates, and handsomely presented with the 
freedom of the town. 

He made an excursion to Wauchope, to see his 
fair correspondent, Mrs. Scott ; the laird, he said, 
was shrewd in his farming matters, and frequently 
stumbled in conversation on a strong, rather than 
a good thing ; the lady had sense, taste, and a de- 
cision peculiar to female authors. — " Kelso; dine 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 147 

with the Farmer's Club ; all gentlemen talking of 
high matters : each of them keeps a hunter, from 
thirty to fifty pounds value, and attends the fox- 
huntings in the county. Go out with Mr. Ker, one 
of the club, and a friend of Mr. Ainslie's, to lie ; Mr. 
Ker, a most gentlemanly, clever fellow ; a widower, 
with some fine children ; his mind and manner as- 
tonishingly like my dear old friend, Robert Muir, 
in Kilmarnock ; he offers to accompany me on my 
English tour: dine with Sir Alexander Don ; clever, 
but far from being a match for his divine lady." 

On the thirteenth of May, Burns visited Dry- 
burgh Abbey, and though the weather was wdld, 
spent an hour among the ruins, since hallow r ed by 
the dust of Scott ; he crossed the Leader, and went 
up the Tweed to Melrose, which he calls a " far- 
famed glorious ruin." Though desirous of musing 
on battle-fields, he seems to have left Ancram-moor 
unheeded; nor did he pause to look at the spot 
where 

M Gallant Cessford's heart-blood dear 
Reeked on dark Elliot's border spear." 

He sat for some time, indeed, among the broom of 
the Cowden-knowes, and had a chat with the Souters 
of Selkirk, concerning the field of Flodden ; but no 
one seems to have told him of Huntly-burn, where 
True Thomas flirted with the Fairy Queen ; nor of 
Philiphaugh, where Montrose and his cavaliers were 
routed by Lesly : nor of Carterhaugh, made memo- 
rable in song by the fine ballad of Tamlane, He 
was not in a pastoral mood ; for he says briefly, 
" The whole country hereabouts, both on Tweed 
and Ettrick, remarkably stony." In the inspiration 
L 2 



148 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

necessary for verse, there is none of the spirit of 
prophecy : he passed over some broken ground and 
peat-haggs, where his mare, Jenny Geddes, kept 
her feet with difficulty, unconscious that on that 
desolate spot the Towers of Abbotsford would, ere 
long, arise, and those immortal Romances be written, 
which have made his own the second name in Scot- 
tish literature. 

The weather having settled, the Poet visited In- 
verleithing, where, says he, I dined and drank some 
" Galloway whey," and saw Elibanks and Elibraes 
on the other side of the Tweed. In the morning he 
continued his journey and found other places made 
famous in tale and song. — " Dine at a country inn, 
kept by a miller in Earlston, the birth-place and re- 
sidence of the celebrated Thomas the Rhymer, and 
saw the ruins of his castle/' He now shaped his 
course to Dunse, where he met " the Rev. Mr. 
Smith, a famous punster, and Mr. Meikle, a cele- 
brated mechanic, and inventor of the threshing- 
mills." Berwick he looked on as " an idle town, 
rudely picturesque." At Eyemouth, he loved the 
look of the sea and shore so much, that he took a 
sail after dinner ; here, in compliment to his genius, 
so runs the brotherly record, he was made a royal 
arch mason of St. Abb's lodge. — " Sir James Hall 
of Dunglass, having heard," he says, " of my being 
in the neighbourhood, comes to Mr. Sheriff's to break- 
fast ; takes me to see his fine scenery on the stream 
of Dunglass. Dunglass, the most romantic, sweet 
place I ever saw. Sir James and his lady, a pleasant 
happy couple ; he points out a walk, for which he 
has an uncommon respect, as it was made by an 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 149 

aunt of his to whom he owes much." Burns seems 
to have fallen into something of a cynical mood on 
leaving the author of the ingenious work on the 
" Origin of Gothic Architecture." A lady, of whose 
charms and conversation he was no admirer, resolved 
to accompany him to Dunbar ; the description is 
severe and clever. — " She mounts an old cart-horse, 
as huge and lean as a house ; a rusty old side-saddle 
without girth or stirrup, but fastened on with an old 
pillion-girth : herself as fine as hands could make 
her, in cream-coloured riding-clothes, hat and fea- 
ther, &c. I, ashamed of my situation, ride like the 
devil, and almost shake her to pieces." 

On reaching Dunbar he notes in his journal — 
" Passed through the most glorious corn country I 
ever saw. Dine with Provost Fall, an eminent 
merchant; Mrs. Fall a genius in painting; clever 
in the arts and sciences, without a consummate 
assurance of her own abilities." The sarcastic hu- 
mour of the Poet continues : he meets a lady — 
" a clever woman, but no brent new ; with tolerable 
pretensions to remark and wit, while time had blown 
the blushing bud of bashful modesty into the full- 
blossomed flower of easy confidence." He likewise 
meets " a fellow whose looks are of that kind which 
deceived me in a gentleman at Kelso, and has often 
deceived me ; a goodly, handsome figure and face, 
which incline one to give them credit for parts 
which they have not." The cloud now begins to 
pass away. "In good time comes an antidote;" 
he reached Dunse, and " found Miss Ainslie, the 
amiable, the sensible, the good-humoured and sweet 
Miss Ainslie, all alone at Berry well. How well* 



150 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

bred, how frank, how good she is ! Charming Ra- 
chel ! may thy bosom never be wrung by the evils 
of this life of sorrows, or by the villainy of this 
world's sons !" 

Burns was now joined by Mr. Ker, and set off on 
a jaunt into England : sudden illness seized him by 
the way; the entry in his journal is characteristic. — 
" I am taken extremely ill, with strong feverish 
symptoms, and have a servant to watch me all night. 
Embittering remorse scares my fancy at the gloomy 
forebodings of death. I am determined to live for 
the future in such a manner as not to be scared at 
the approach of Death : I am sure I could meet Him 
with indifference, but for the something beyond the 
grave." He recovered his health and spirits, and 
went to see the roup of an unfortunate farmer's stock. 
He surveyed the scene with a darkening brow and a 
troubled eye. — " Rigid economy, and decent in- 
dustry/* he said, " do you preserve me from being 
the principal dramatis persona in such a scene of 
horror. This day I feel myself warm with senti- 
ments of gratitude to the great Preserver of men, 
who has kindly restored me to health and strength." 
He now recommenced his tour. 

" Sunday, May, 27. — Cross Tweed, and traverse 
the moors, through a wild country, till T reach Aln- 
wick-Castle. Monday— Come through bye-ways 
to Warkworth, where we dine. Warkworth, situated 
very picturesque with Coquet Island, a small rocky 
spot, the seat of an old monastery, facing it a little 
in the sea ; and the small but romantic river Coquet 
running through it. Sleep at Morpeth, a pleasant- 
enough little town, and on next day to Newcastle." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 151 

The Poet seems to have found little in Newcastle 
to interest him : tradition says, that at dinner he 
was startled at seeing the meat served before the 
soup. " This," said his facetious entertainer, " is 
in obedience to a Northumberland maxim, which 
enjoins us to eat the beef before we sup the broth, 
lest the hungry Scotch make an inroad and snatch 
it." Burns laughed heartily. On leaving New- 
castle he rode through Hexham, and on to Long- 
town, which he reached on a hiring day. — " I am 
uncommonly happy," he says, " to see so many 
young folks enjoying life/' Here he parted with 
his friend Ker ; and, arriving at Carlisle, sat down 
and gave a brief account of his jaunt, to his friend 
Nicol, in very particular Scotch ; saying, in conclu- 
sion, " I'll be in Dumfries the morn, gif the beast 
be to the fore, an' the branks bide hale. God bo 
wi' you, Willie. Amen." 

From Carlisle he went along the coast to Annan 
and Dumfries. — " I am quite charmed," he says, 
" with Dumfries folk. Mr. Burnside, the clergy- 
man, in particular, is a man whom I shall ever 
gratefully remember : and his wife— simplicity, 
elegance, good sense, and good humour, are the 
constituents of her manner and heart." Burns next 
proceeded to Dalswinton, and walked over the un- 
occupied farms ; but, though he expressed himself 
pleased with the land and the general aspect of the 
valley, he declined for the time the handsome offer 
of a four-nineteen years' lease on his own terms; 
and, saying he would return in autumn, departed. 
" From my view of the lands," he said in a letter 
to Nicol, " and Mr. Miller's reception of my bard- 



152 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ship, my hopes in that business are rather mended, 
but still they are but slender." 

The friends of Burns considered this an agricul- 
tural rather than a poetic tour. It partook of the 
nature of both ; remarks on varieties of soil ; rota- 
tion of crop, and on land, pastoral or cultivated, 
mingled curiously with sketches of personal cha- 
racter, notices of visits paid to hoary ruins, or to 
scenes memorable in song. His curiosity was ex- 
cited : his heart a little touched, but neither the fine 
scenery, nor the lovely women, produced any serious 
effect on his muse. The sole poetic fruit of the 
excursion is an epistle to Creech, dated Selkirk, 
May 13, and written, he says, " Nearly extempore, 
in a solitary inn, after a miserable wet day's riding. " 
It is, in its nature, complimentary: the dripping 
sky, and " the worst inn's worst room," induced 
the Poet to make light of 

« 4 The Eden scenes on crystal Jed, 
And Ettrick banks, now roaring red," 

and think of the wit and the wine of Edinburgh, and 
see in imagination, philosophers, poets, 

" And toothy critics by the score, 
In bloody raw." 

crowding to the levee of the patronizing bibliopole. 
After an absence of six busy, and to him eventful 
months, Burns returned to Mossgiel the 8th of June, 
1787. His mother, a woman of few words, met 
him with tears of joy in her eyes at the threshold, 
saying, " Oh, Robert I* He had left her hearth in 
the darkness of night, and he came back in the 
brightness of day ; he went away an obscure and 
almost nameless adventurer, and he returned with a 
name, round which there was already a halo not 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 153 

destined soon to be eclipsed. In his own eyes, his 
early aspirations after fame seemed as hopeless as 
11 the blind groping of Homer's Cyclops round the 
walls of his cave ;" he had now made his way to the 
mountain-top, his pipe was at his lips, and all the 
country round was charmed with his melody. The 
last lines which he expected to measure in Caledonia 
were not yet uttered, and he who, to use his own 
words, was lately 

" Darkling derned in glens and hallows, 
And hunted, as was William Wallace, 
By constables, those blackguard fallows, 
And dailies baith," 

was now a poet of the highest order ; the fit and ac- 
cepted companion of the proud and the lordly, with 
gold, the fruits of his genius, in his pocket, and 
more promised by the muse. Those who formerly 
were cold or careless, now approached to praise and 
to welcome him ; while his mother, who never ima- 
gined that aught good could come from idle rhyme, 
received all as something dropped from heaven, and 
rejoiced in the fame of her son. 

He remained at home some ten or twelve days. 
He went little out. His acquaintance with Jean 
Armour was probably not at that time renewed, nor 
did he visit more than one friend or two ; his chief 
occupation was in writing to his literary acquaint- 
ances, and discussing with his brother Gilbert the 
chances of success in agriculture. He was restless — 
he was not satisfied with his position in society ; he 
neither belonged to the high nor to the low. Rank, 
he felt, had taken his hand coldly to squeeze and to 
drop it, while his rustic brethren looked upon him 
as having risen above their condition. The feelings 



154 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

which agitated him are forcibly — nay, darkly, ex- 
pressed in a letter to Nicol, dated Mauchline, June 
18: — "I never, my friend, thought mankind very 
capable of any thing generous ; but the stateliness 
of the patricians in Edinburgh, and the servility of 
my plebeian brethren since I returned home, have 
nearly put me out of conceit altogether with my spe- 
cies. I have bought a pocket Milton, which I carry 
perpetually about with me, in order to study the sen- 
timents — the dauntless magnaminity — the intrepid 
unyielding independence — the desperate, daring, and 
noble defiance of hardship in that great personage 
Satan. 'Tis true I have just now a little cash ; but 
I am afraid the star that hitherto has shed its malig- 
nant purpose-blasting rays full in my zenith — that 
noxious planet, so baleful in its influence to the 
rhyming trade, I much dread it is not yet beneath 
my horizon. Misfortune dogs the path of human 
life ; the poetic mind finds itself miserably deranged 
in, and unfit for, the walks of business. Add to all 
that, thoughtless follies and hare-brained whims, 
like so many ignes fatui, eternally diverging from 
the right line of sober discretion, sparkle with step- 
bewitching blaze in the idly-gazing eyes of the poor 
heedless bard, till pop ' he falls, like Lucifer, never 
to hope again.' " In this mood he left Mauchline, 
and hurried to Edinburgh. 

In some of the doings of Burns during the latter 
half of the year 1787, we see a mind " unfitted with 
an aim ;" he moved much about without any visible 
purpose in his motions. We have now to follow 
him northward in three successive and hurried ex- 
cursions, in which he passed into the Western High- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 155 

lands, examined Stirlingshire, and penetrated east- 
ward as far as Inverness. In his first tour he was 
mounted on Jenny Geddes, named after the devout 
virago who threw a stool at the Dean of Edinburgh's 
head — perhaps the lady celebrated in song : — 

" Jenny Geddes was the gossip 
Put the gown upon the Bishop." 

Of this journey we know little that is pleasant. Burns 
seems to have been possessed with a spirit of ill-hu- 
mour during the greater part of the expedition. He 
first bent his steps to Carron, and, desiring to see 
the celebrated Foundry, was repulsed from the gate, 
rudely as he thought ; for he put his complaint into 
no very decorous language : — 

(< We came na' here to view your wark.3 
In hopes to he mair wise, 
But only, lest we gang to hell, 
It might be nae surprise." 

He then proceeded to Stirling. The Poet was an 
intense lover of his country and her glory : the 
displeasure with which the people of Scotland re- 
garded the Union which had removed all visible 
symbols of power and independence, was not in 
those days subsided ; and, when he looked on 
the Hall where princes once ruled and Scottish 
parliaments assembled, and reflected that it was 
laid in ruins by a prince of the house of Hanover, 
he gave vent to his proper indignation in improper 
verse : — 

« Here Stuarts once in glory reigned, 
And laws for Scotland's weal ordained ; 
But now unroofed their palace stands, 
Their sceptre's swayed by other hands; 
The injured Stuart line is gone, 
A race outlandish fills the throne." 

Two other lines followed, forming the bitter point 



156 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

to the epigram — they were remembered in after-days 
to the Poet's injury. He seems not to have been 
very sensible at that time of his imprudence ; — for 
some one said, " Burns, this will do you no good." — 
" I shall reprove myself," he said ; and wrote these 
aggravating words : 

" Rash mortal, and slanderous poet, thy name 
Shall no longer appear in the records of fame ; 
Does not know that old Mansfield, who writes like the Bible, 
Says the more 'tis a truth, Sir, the more 'tis a libel ?" 

Such satire was not likely to pass without re- 
monstrance ; Hamilton, of Gladsmuir, wrote a reply, 
wherein he lamented that a mind, 

" Where Genius lights her brightest fires," 

should disdain truth, and law, and justice ; 

" And skulking with a villain's aim, 
Thus basely stab his monarch's fame." 

There are few who will not concur in the propriety 
of this rebuke. The writer, however, resolved to be 
prophet, as well as poet and priest : — 

" Yes, Burns, 'tis o'er — thy race is run, 
And shades receive thy setting sun : 
These few rash lines shall damn thy name, 
And blast thy hopes of future fame." 

Poetic sarcasms on ruling powers may keep a man 
from rising in the church where princes are patrons, 
but they have no influence on his ascent up Par- 
nassus : of this no one was more aware than Burns, 
nor was he long at a loss for an answer to the 
minister of Gladsmuir, 

" Like Esop's lion, Burns says sore I feel 
All others scorn— but damn that ass's heel." 

After leaving Stirling, we hear no more of him 
till, having traversed a portion of the Western 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 157 

Highlands, passed through Inverary, and made 
his appearance at Arrochar, he thus addresses 
Ainslie : " I write you this on my tour through a 
country where savage streams tumble over savage 
mountains ; thinly overspread with savage flocks, 
which starvingly support as savage inhabitants. 
My last stage was Inverary — to-morrow night's 
stage, Dumbarton." This was on the 28th of June. 
At Inverary, he found the principal inn tilled by a 
visiting party to the Duke of Argyle, who engrossed 
all the attention of the landlord ; and the poor Bard, 
mounted on a sorry mare, without friend or lackey, 
was neglected. He avenged himself with unmerited 
bitterness : — 

" Whoe'er he be who sojourns here, 

I pity much his case, 
Unless he's come to wait upon 

The lord their god, his Grace ; 
There's naething here but Highland pride, 

But Highland pride and hunger ; 
If Providence has sent me here 

'Twas surely in his anger." 

If the Poet wrote these lines on the window of the 
inn, he must have administered the spur at his de- 
parture with little mercy to the sides of Jenny 
Geddes; for highland wrath is as hot as highland 
hospitality. 

Burns recovered his composure of mind before 
reaching Dumbarton ; he had, moreover, fallen into 
very pleasant company. Having dined with a hospi- 
table highland gentleman, he was introduced to a 
merry party. — " Our dancing," says the Bard, "was 
none of the French or English insipid formal move- 
ments. The ladies sung Scotch songs like angels ; 
then we flew at < Bab at the bowster,' ' Tulloch- 
gorum,' ' Loch-Erroch side,' &c, like midges 



158 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

sporting in the mottie sun. When the dear lasses 
left us, we ranged round the howl till the good-fellow 
hour of six ; except a few minutes that we went to 
pay our devotions to the glorious lamp of day peer- 
ing over the towering top of Benlomond. We all 
kneeled. Our worthy landlord's son held the howl, 
each man a full glass in his hand, and I, as priest, 
repeated some rhyming nonsense : like Thomas the 
Rhymer's prophecies, I suppose." 

These highland high-jinks were not yet concluded. 
After a few hours' sleep and a good dinner at another 
good fellow's house, Burns mounted his mare, and, 
accompanied hy two friends, rode along Lochlomond 
side on his way to Dumharton. — " We found our- 
selves," he says " « no very fou, hut gaily yet,' and 
I rode soherly, till hy came a highlandman at the 
gallop, on a tolerably good horse, hut which had 
never known the ornaments of iron or leather. We 
scorned to he out-galloped hy a highlandman, so off 
we started, whip-and-spur. My companions fell 
sadly a-stern ; hut my old mare, Jenny Geddes, one 
of the Rosinante family, strained past the highland- 
man, in spite of all his efforts with the hair halter. 
Just as I was passing him, Donald wheeled his horse, 
as if to cross before me to mar my progress, when 
down came his horse, and threw his rider's hreekless 
bottom into a dipt hedge, and down came Jenny Ged- 
des over all, and my hardship between her and the 
highlandmari's horse. Jenny trode over me with 
cautious reverence. As for the rest of my acts and 
my wars, and all my wise sayings, and why my mare 
was called Jenny Geddes, they shall be recorded, in 
a few- weeks, in the chronicles of your memory," 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 159 

Bums returned to Mauchline by the way of Glas- 
gow, and remained with his mother during the latter 
part of the month of July. He renewed his intercourse 
with the family of the Armours. Jean's heart still 
beat tenderly towards " The plighted husband of her 
youth;" and Burns, much as his pride was wounded, 
could not help regarding her with affection. He 
had, as yet, no very defined notion of what he should 
do in the world : he trusted to time and chance. 
" I have yet fixed," he thus writes to a friend, " on 
nothing with respect to the serious business of life. 
I am just as usual — a rhyming, mason-making, 
raking, aimless fellow. However, I shall some- 
where have a farm soon — I was going to say a wife, 
too ; but that must never be my blessed lot. I am 
but a younger son of the house of Parnassus ; and, 
like other younger sons of great families, I may in- 
trigue, if I choose to run all risks, but must not 
marry." 

It is plain that Burns regarded the burning 
of his marriage lines as not only destroying all 
evidence of his engagements with Jean Armour, but 
as a deliberate revocation of vows on her part which 
released him from the responsibilities of wedlock. 
Xay, this seems to have been the notion of graver 
men ; for the Poet thus writes to David Bryce, 17th 
July, 1786 : — " Poor Jean is come back to Mauch- 
line. I went to call for her, but her mother forbade 
me the house. I have already appeared publicly in 
church, and was indulged in the liberty of standing 
in my own seat. I do this to get a certificate as a 
bachelor, which Mr. Auld has promised me." In 



160 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

this I see the anxiety of Mr. Armour to obliterate all 
traces of the marriage, and the concurrence, at least of 
the Poet in the proceeding. Robert Burns and Jean 
Armour might permit their friends to regard them 
as unmarried, and, if such was their own pleasure, 
call themselves single ; but their children were not, 
I apprehend, affected in their claims to legitimacy by 
this disavowal on the part of their parents ; the law 
would, I think, enforce their rights for them in 
spite of the disclamation of both father and mother, 
Nay, I suspect the law refuses to recognize any other 
dissolution of wedlock than what is effected by civil 
or ecclesiastical authority. However this may be, 
the Poet affected all the freedom of speech and action 
which custom concedes to bachelors, and seemed 
oftener than once on the point of unwittingly agi- 
tating the question, whether an Ayrshire lass or an 
Edinburgh lady should plead a property in his 
hand. 

The second excursion of Burns towards the north 
was made in the company of Dr. Adair, of Harrow- 
gate, whom chance made into a comrade, and who 
fortunately kept the particulars of the journey in his 
memory. He set out early in August from Edin- 
burgh, passed through Linlithgow, and made his 
appearance again at the gates of Carron Foundry — 
they were opened with an apology for former rude- 
ness, which mollified the bard ; and he beheld in 
their tremendous furnaces and broiling labours a 
resemblance to the cavern of the Cyclops. A resem- 
blance of a less classical kind had before occurred to 
him. From Carron he hurried to Stirling, that he 
might break and replace the pane of glass in the inn 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 161 

window on which he had written those rash and in- 
jurious lines already alluded to ; and then he pro- 
ceeded to visit Ramsay of Ochtertyre, whose romantic 
residence on the Teith he admired greatly, and 
whose conversation, rife as it was with knowledge of 
Scottish literature, was altogether after his own heart. 
This visit was brief, but full of interest. The laird 
of Ochtertyre had a memory filled with old traditions 
and old songs. He had written some ingenious 
essays on the olden poetry, displaying feeling and 
taste ; and moreover, the walls of his house were 
hung with long Latin inscriptions, much to the 
wonder of the unlearned Bard of Kyle. 

They discussed fit topics for the muse — a rustic 
drama, and Scottish Georgics. "What beautiful land- 
scapes of rural life and manners," says Ramsay, 
" might not have been expected from a pencil so 
faithful and forcible as his, which could have exhi- 
bited scenes as familiar and interesting as those in 
the Gentle Shepherd, which every one who knows 
our swains in their unadulterated state instantly 
recognizes as true to nature. But to have executed 
either of these plans, steadiness and abstraction from 
company were wanted, not genius." Of Burns's 
power of conversation, he says, " I have been in the 
company of many men of genius, some of them 
poets, but never witnessed such flashes of intellec- 
tual brightness as from him — the impulse of the 
moment — sparks of celestial fire." It is painful to 
think that the celestial sayings of the Poet have 
vanished from men's memories, while the less mental 
and grosser things remain. He continued two days 
on the Teith, and then proceeded to Harvieston, 

VOL. I. M 



162 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

where he was received with much respect and kind- 
ness by Mrs. Hamilton and her daughters. Here 
he saw Charlotte Hamilton for the first time. — "She 
is not only beautiful," he thus wrote to her brother 
Gavin, of Mauchline, " but lovely. Her form is 
elegant, her features not regular, but they have the 
smile of sweetness, and the settled complacency of 
good nature in the highest degree ; and her com- 
plexion, now that she has recovered her wonted 
health, is equal to Miss Burnet's. After the exer- 
cise of our riding to the Falls, Charlotte was exactly 
Dr. Donne's mistress : — 

8 Her pure and eloquent blood, 
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 
That one would almost say her body thought.' 

Her eyes are fascinating ; at once expressive of good 
sense, tenderness, and a noble mind." 

The account of Dr. Adair supplies some circum- 
stances which Burns has omitted. " We made ex- 
cursions," he says, " to various parts of the surround- 
ing scenery, particularly Castle- Campbell, the ancient 
seat of the family of Argyle ; and the famous cata- 
ract of the Devon, called the Cauldron-Linn ; and 
the Bumbling-Bridge, a single broad arch, thrown 
by the devil, if tradition is to be believed, across the 
river, at about the height of a hundred feet above 
its bed. A visit to Mrs. Bruce, of Clackmannan, a 
lady above ninety, the lineal descendant of that race 
w r hich gave the Scottish throne its brightest orna- 
ment, interested his feelings powerfully. This 
venerable dame, with characteristic dignity, informed 
me, on my observing that I believed she was de- 
scended from the family of Robert Bruce, that 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 163 

Robert Bruce was sprung from her family. She was 
in possession of the hero's helmet and two-handed 
sword, with which she conferred on Burns and myself 
the honour of knighthood, observing that she had a 
better right to confer that title than some people. 
Her political tenets were as Jacobitical as the Poet's, 
a conformity which contributed not a little to the 
cordiality of our reception. She gave us as her first 
toast after dinner, * Awa uncos', or away strangers ; 
who these strangers are you will readily understand." 
At Dumfer inline, on visiting the abbey church, the 
Poet persuaded Adair to represent a sinner on the 
stool of repentance, while he, in the character of 
priest, admonished him from the pulpit on the enor- 
mity of his transgression, and the frequency of its 
occurrence. He knelt down, and kissed with much 
fervour the broad flag-stone which covered the grave 
of the great restorer of Scottish independence, 
Robert Bruce, and execrated the want of respect 
shewn by the local authorities to the dust of the first 
of heroes. They returned to Edinburgh by the way 
of Kinross and Queensferry. 

It was the complaint of the Harvieston ladies that 
Burns broke out into no poetic raptures on visiting 
the magnificence of the Cauldron-Linn, or the me- 
lancholy splendour of Castle-Campbell, and because 
he was next to silent, they concluded he had no 
taste for the picturesque. Other reasons may be as- 
signed for the moderation of his raptures. He dis- 
liked to be tutored in matters of taste, and could 
not endure that one should run shouting before him 
whenever any fine object appeared. On one occasion 
of this kind, a lady at tne Poet's side said, "Burns/ 
M 2 



164 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

have you nothing to say of this ? " — " Nothing, 
madam," he replied, glancing at the leader of the 
party, " for an ass, is braying over it." One even- 
ing, Lockhart relates, as the Poet passed near the 
Carron Foundry, when the furnaces were casting 
forth flames, his companion exclaimed, " Look ! 
Burns, look ! good heavens, look, look— what a 
glorious sight !" — " Sir," said the Bard, clapping 
spurs to Jenny Geddes, " I would not look ! look! 
at your bidding, were it into the mouth of hell." 
When he visited Creehope-Linn, in Dumfries-shire, at 
every turn of the stream and bend of the wood he 
was called loudly upon to admire the shelving sinu- 
osities of the burn, and the caverned splendour of its 
all but inaccessible banks — it was thought by those 
with him that he did not shew rapture enoughs — " I 
could not admire it more Sir" said the Poet, " if He 
who made it were to ask me to do it." 

There were other reasons for the Poet being " so 
bashful and so grave" in the company of the Har- 
vieston ladies. From his frequent praise in prose, 
from his admiration in song, and the general tone of 
his conversation, I cannot avoid concluding that he 
thought more than favourably of Charlotte Hamilton. 
In the presence of female loveliness, Burns could 
see no landscape beauty ; with Charlotte beside him, 
the Cauldron-Linn seemed an ordinary cascade, and 
Castle-Gloom not at all romantic. There is no po- 
sitive evidence that he paid his addresses to the 
" Fairest Maid of Devon Banks ;" but he did much 
to render himself acceptable, and as an oblique way 
of making his approach, he strove, and not without 
success, to merit the good opinion of her companion. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 1G5 

Margaret Chalmers, a young lady of beauty as well 
as sense, now Mrs. Hay of Edinburgh. I can give 
but an imperfect account of the progress of the 
Poet's passion, for some twelve or fourteen of his 
most carefully written and gently expressed letters 
were in an evil hour, thrown into the fire by Char- 
lotte Hamilton, and all the record we have is his 
songs and what is contained in his correspondence. 
Of the lyrical lime-twigs which the Poet laid on 
the banks of the Devon, he gives the following 
intimation, in a letter to Margaret Chalmers: — 
" Talking of Charlotte, I must tell her that I have, 
to the best of my power, paid her a poetic compli- 
ment. The air is admirable ; true old Highland ; it 
was the tune of a Gaelic song which an Inverness 
lady sung me, and I was so charmed with it, that I 
begged her to write me a set of it from her singing, 
for it had never been set before. I am fixed that it 
shall go in Johnson's next number, so Charlotte and 
you need not spend your precious time in contra- 
dicting me. I won't say the poetry is first rate, 
though I am convinced it is very well ; and what is 
not always the case with compliments to ladies, it is 
not only sincere but just." The Poet alludes to his 
sweet and graceful song, " The Banks of the Devon," 
The praise is figurative : — 

" Let Bourbon exult in his gay gilded lilies, 
And England triumphant display her proud rose, 
A fairer than either adorns the green vallies, 
Where Devon, sweet Devon, meandering flows." 

Having secured her immortality in song, and pro- 
bably observed the coldness with which his har- 
monious compliments were received, Burns com- 
plains obliquely of Charlotte's want of sympathy ? 



106 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

by imagining that his words have no longer any 
fascination for woman. " My rhetoric," he says, 
" seems quite to have lost its effect on the lovely 
half of mankind ; I have seen the day, but that is 
* a tale of other years/ In my conscience, I believe, 
that my heart has been so often on fire, that it is 
absolutely vitrified. I look on the sex with some 
thing like the admiration with which I regard the 
starry sky in a frosty December night ; I admire the 
beauty of the Creator's workmanship ; I am charmed 
with the wild, but graceful eccentricity of their mo- 
tions — and wish them goodnight." He says in another 
letter to the same young lady, that he has a heart 
for friendship, if not for love, and deserves the tender 
sympathy of the two blooming spinsters. " Charlotte 
and you are just two favourite resting places for my 
soul in her wanderings through the weary, thorny 
wilderness of this world. God knows I am ill-fitted 
for the struggle ; I glory in being a poet, and want 
to be thought a wise man; I would fain be generous, 
and I desire to be rich. After all, I am afraid I am 
a lost subject. Some folk hae a hantle o' fauts, but 
I'm a ne'er-do-weel." 

As the correspondence proceeded, Burns was over- 
set by a tipsy coachman, and one of his legs danger- 
ously bruised. He thinks of Harvieston and the 
condolence of beauty. " I am under the care of a 
surgeon," he says, " with a bruised limb extended 
on a cushion, and the tints of my mind vying with 
the livid horror preceding a midnight thunder-storm. 
I have taken, tooth and nail, to the bible ; it is really 
a glorious book ; I would give my best song to my 
worst foe, I mean the merit of making it, to have 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 167 

you and Charlotte by me. You are angelic creatures, 
and would pour oil and wine into my wounded 
spirit." Charlotte Hamilton, to whose ear and heart 
most of these fine things were obliquely addressed, 
was not to be moved by the muse ; she was pro- 
bably aware of the more than equivocal situation in 
which the Poet stood with regard to Jean Armour, 
and she felt a growing regard for Adair, whom Burns 
had introduced. This, in some measure, accounts 
for the indifferent success of the Poet, in a matter 
on which he seems to have set his heart, and also 
for the destruction of his letters. 

The third and last tour of Burns was performed in 
the company of Xicol. The master of the High- 
school had made himself agreeable to the Poet by an 
intrepid mode of expression, and an admiration of 
whatever was hairbrained and sentimental. He was 

" A fiery ether-cap ; a fractious chiel/' 

and altogether one of those companions who re- 
quire prudent management. They commenced their 
tour in a post chaise, on the 25th of August, 1787. 
Bums kept a journal of the journey : it is now 
before me, and begins thus : — " I leave Edinburgh 
for a northern tour, in company with my good friend 
Mr. Nicol, whose originality of humour promises me 
much entertainment. Linlithgow, a fertile improved 
county. West Lothian ; — the more elegance and 
luxury among the farmers, I always observe, in equal 
proportion the rudeness and stupidity of the pea- 
santry. For this, among other reasons, I think that 
a man of romantic taste — ' a man of feeling' will 
be better pleased with the poverty, but intelligent 
minds of the peasantry in Ayrshire, than the opu- 



168 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

lence of a club of Merse farmers, when at the same 
time he considers the vandalism of their plough- 
folks. I carry this idea so far that an unenclosed, 
half-improved country, is to me actually more agree- 
able, and gives me more pleasure as a prospect than 
a country cultivated like a garden. " The Poet re- 
fused to look on the world through the coloured spec- 
tacles of political economists ; he preferred happiness 
to wealth. 

The soil about Linlithgow he considered as light 
and thin ; the town bore all the marks of ancient 
grandeur, and the situation he declared to be retired 
and rural. — " The old Royal Palace," says his 
journal, " is a tolerable fine but melancholy ruin, 
sweetly situated on a small elevation by the brink of 
a loch. Shewn the room where the beautiful injured 
Mary Queen of Scots was born. A pretty good old 
Gothic church, with the infamous stool of repent- 
ance standing, in the old Romish way, on a lofty 
situation. What a poor pimping business is a Pres- 
byterian place of worship ; dirty, narrow, and squalid ; 
stuck in the corner of old Popish grandeur, such as 
Linlithgow, and much more Melrose. Ceremony 
and shew, if judiciously thrown in, absolutely neces- 
sary for the bulk of mankind, both in civil and re- 
ligious matters." He continues his tour, and his 
remarks — " Pleasant view of Dumfermline, and the 
rest of the fertile coast of Fife. Come through the 
rich Carse of Falkirk to pass the night. Falkirk 
nothing remarkable, except the grave of Sir John 
the Grahame, over which in the succession of time, 
four stones have been placed. Pass Dunipace — a 
place laid out with fine taste — a charming amphi- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 169 

theatre, bounded by a fine village. The Carron, 
running down the bosom of the whole, makes it one 
of the most charming little prospects I have seen. 
Come on to Bannockburn ; shewn the old house 
where James III. finished so tragically his unfortu- 
nate life ; the field of Bannockburn, the hole where 
glorious Bruce set his standard. Here no Scot can 
pass uninterested." 

I prefer, however, the account briefly rendered in 
one of his letters to all the rapture of his journal. — 
" Stirling, August 26 — This morning I knelt at the 
tomb of Sir John the Grahame, the gallant friend of 
the immortal Wallace, and two hours ago I said a 
fervent prayer for old Caledonia, over the hole in a 
blue whinstone, where Robert the Bruce fixed his 
royal standard on the banks of Bannockburn ; and 
just now, from Stirling Castle, I have seen, by the 
setting sun, the glorious prospect of the windings of 
Forth through the rich Carse of Stirling, and skirt- 
ing the equally rich Carse of Falkirk." The ancient 
glory of his country, and the deeds of her heroes, 
were ever present to his mind. 

In his way to Crieff, Burns saw the Ochel-hills, 
the Devon, the Teith, and the Allan ; he rode up 
the romantic Earn ; visited Strathallan, " a fine 
country, but little improved ;" Auchtertyre, where 
" grows the aik," as his own inimitable song says, 
and going up Glen- Almond, he visited the " tra- 
ditionary grave" of Ossian. Making his way to 
Taymouth, he gazed long and earnestly on the 
spreading vale, the princely towers, and the expand- 
ing sea : the torrent at his feet came in for a share 
of poetic praise : 



170 THE LIFE OE ROBERT BURNS. 

" The sweeping theatre of hanging woods: 

The incessant roar of headlong-tumbling floods.' 

He passed through Dunkeld, visited the Lyon river, 
and knelt and said prayers in the Druid's temple, a 
smaller Stonehenge : of this piece of antiquity, he 
says, " Three circles of stone — the outermost sunk — 
the second has thirteen stones remaining — the inner- 
most has eight — two large detached ones, like a gate 
to the south-east." Of Aberfeldy he briefly writes — 
" described in rhyme." He composed " The Birks 
of Aberfeldy" as he stood by the falls ; the scene is 
truly beautiful, and the song rivals in truth and 
effect the landscape. From thence he proceeded to 
Birnam top : looked down the Tay, and visited a 
Hermitage on the Bran-water dedicated to the genius 
of Ossian. — " Breakfast with Dr. Stewart ; Neil 
Gow plays — a short, stout-built, honest highland 
figure, with his grayish hair shed on his honest social 
brow ; an interesting face, marking strong sense ; 
kind open-heartedness, mixed with unmistrusting 
simplicity ; visit his house — Margaret Gow." He 
next passed up the Tummel to Blair ; glanced at 
the beautiful and romantic Fascally ; the wild gran- 
deur of the Pass of Killiecrankie. In remembrance 
of this in one of his after songs, he makes a soldier of 
Mackay's say — 

" The bauld Pitcur fell in a fur, 
And Clavers got a clankie, 
Else I'd hae fed an A thole gled 
On the braes of Killiecrankie. 

From the battle field, Burns proceeded to the 
palace of the Duke of Athol, at Blair, where he was 
welcomed with much kindness and courtesy :- — "Sup 
with the duchess ; easy and happy from the manners 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 171 

of the family ; confirmed in my good opinion of my 
friend Walker." Such is his brief record of this event ; 
Professor Walker merited the eulogium, and more ; 
no sooner did he observe Nicol, than, knowing the 
manners of the man, he prepared an entertainment 
according to the nature of the fierce pedagogue. A 
fishing-rod and a servant to attend him by day, and 
choice wine and a snug table at night, charmed 
Nicol and left Burns leisure to converse with the 
Duke and Duchess, and visit the scenes around, 
which he declared were fine by nature, but hurt by 
bad taste. Of the visit and visitor, the Professor 
has given us the following account : — 

" Burns seemed at once to perceive and appreciate 
what was due to the company and to himself, and 
never to forget a proper respect for the separate 
species of dignity belonging to each. He did not 
arrogate conversation, but when led into it he spoke 
with ease, propriety, and manliness. He tried to 
exert his abilities, because he knew it was ability 
alone gave him a title to be there. The Duchesses 
fine young family attracted much of his admiration ; 
he drank their healths as ' honest men andbonnie las- 
sies,' an idea which was much applauded by the com- 
pany, and with which he has very felicitously closed 
his poem." The Poet walked out with the Profes- 
sor to view the grounds and the scenery. " When we 
reached," says Walker, " a rustic hut on the river 
Tilt, where it is overhung by a woody precipice, 
from which there is a noble waterfall, he threw him- 
self on the heathy seat, and gave himself up to a 
tender, abstracted, and voluptuous enthusiasm of 
imagination. It was with much difficulty I pre- 



172 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

vailed on him to quit this spot, and to be introduced 
in proper time for supper." 

It was the wish of the Duke that Burns should 
visit the banks of the Bruar, where the scenery is 
bold and naked. The Poet, accustomed to the 
wooded banks of the Ayr and the Doon, was not 
disposed to admire the barren sublimity of the Bruar, 
and accordingly wrote a rhyming petition, in which 
the water requests the umbrage of birch and hazel 
from the hands of the noble proprietor. This was 
almost the only wish which the Poet ever uttered 
that any pains were taken to gratify. The banks of 
the Bruar are now clothed as he prescribed — the trouts 
are sheltered from the sun by the overhanging 
boughs — the songster's nest is to be seen in its season, 

" And birks extend their fragrant arms 
To screen the dear embrace." 

Burns hastened his departure from Blair ; two of 
his biographers express regret at this. Had he re- 
mained, they observe, but a few days, he would have 
met Lord Melville, who had the chief management 
of the internal affairs of Scotland, and who "might 
not improbably have been induced to bestow that 
consideration on the claims of the Poet which, in 
the absence of any personal acquaintance, Burns' 
works ought to have received at his hands." Lord 
Melville admired, with the Poet, woman's beauty, 
wine's allurements, and rough intrepidity of conver- 
sation : there were no other links to unite them. It 
was more to the purpose that Burns, at the table 
of Athole, made the acquaintance of Graham of 
Fintry, who has the merit of doing the little that 
was done for him in the way of patronage. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 173 

Historic and poetic scenes — spots where battles 
had been fought and songs sung, were most in re- 
quest with Burns. On quitting Blair he shaped his 
course towards the Spey, and followed the stream. 
The straths he found rich, the mountains wild and 
magnificent. He saw Rothemurche and the gloomy 
forests of Glenmore, and passing rapidly through 
Strathspey, halted an hour at a wild inn, and visited 
Sir James Grant, whose lady he pronounces in his 
journal sweet and pleasant. " I passed," said he 
to his brother Gilbert, " through a wild country, 
among cliffs grey with eternal snows and glens 
gloomy and savage." He came upon the Findhorn 
" in mist and darkness/' visited Castle-Cawdor, 
where Macbeth murdered Duncan, saw the bed in 
which tradition says the king was stabbed ; hurried 
on to Fort-George, and thence to Inverness. He 
took a hurried look at Loch Ness with its wild braes, 
and the General's Hut ; visited Urquhart Castle, 
with its fine strath ; and was so rapt at the Falls of 
Fyers that he broke out into verse- 
Short as the Poet's stay w T as in Inverness, he 
found leisure to admire the classic capital of the 
eastern Highlands. The ladies, with their snoodedhair 
and simple elegance of dress ; the jail, which was 
pronounced unable to retain a prisoner who belonged 
to a clan ; the fort, raised during the days of Crom- 
well to keep the land in awe ; and the beautiful Hill 
of Fairies, near the river side, claimed by tradition as 
the grave of Thomas the Rhymer, were not looked 
upon without emotion and remark. On leaving 
Inverness he passed over Culloden Moor, a place 
calculated to awaken sad reflections, On that heath, 



174 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

so fatal to the hopes of our ancient line of princes — 
a heath desolate and blasted, and only relieved in its 
brown barrenness by the green mounds raised over 
the bones of the brave — the Poet paused, and was 
long lost in thought ; the fruit of his meditations was 
a lyric, which cannot easily be equalled for simplicity 
and pathos : — 

" The lovely lass o' Inverness, 

Nae joy nor pleasure can she see ; 
For e'en an' morn she cries, alas ! 

And ay the saut tear blins her ee. 
Drumossie moor, Drumossie day, 

A waefu ' day it was to me ; 
For there I lest my father dear — 

My father dear, and brethren three." 

The poet reached Kilravock in time for breakfast ; 
his record of this halt is short, but to the point : — 
" Old Mrs. Rose : sterling sense, warm heart, strong 
feelings and honest pride, all in an uncommon de- 
gree. Mrs. Rose, jun., a little milder than the mo- 
ther ; this, perhaps, owing to her being younger. 
Mrs. Rose and Mr. Grant accompany us to Kil- 
drummie. Two young ladies : Miss Rose, who sung 
two Gaelic songs, beautiful and lovely; Miss Sophia 
Brodie, most agreeable and amiable ; both of them 
gentle, mild, the sweetest creatures on earth — and 
happiness be with them !" Of this visit the Poet had 
long a grateful recollection : " There was something 
in my reception at Kilravock," he says, in a letter to 
Mrs. Rose, " so different from the cold, obsequious, 
dancing-school bow of politeness, that it almost got 
into my head that friendship had occupied her ground 
without the intermediate march of acquaintance. I 
wish I could transcribe, or rather transfuse, into lan- 
guage, the glow of my heart. My ready fancy, with 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 175 

colours more mellow than life itself, painted the 
beautifully wild scenery of Kilravock — the venerable 
grandeur of the castle — the spreading woods — the 
winding river, gladly leaving his unsightly heathy 
source, and lingering with apparent delight as he 
passed the Fairy-Walk at the foot of the garden — 
your late distressful anxieties — your present enjoy- 
ments — your dear little angel, the pride of your hopes 
— my aged friend, venerable in worth and years, whose 
loyalty and other virtues will strongly entitle her to 
the support of the Almighty spirit here, and his 
peculiar favour in a happier state of existence. You 
cannot imagine, madam, how much such feelings 
delight me ; they are the dearest proofs of my own 
immortality." 

Burns, it would appear by a letter from Mrs. Rose, 
had been hurried from her fireside by the importu- 
nities of Xicol ; the two friends now continued their 
journey in a colder mood ; the diary was sadly 
neglected. It affords, however, sundry touches of 
character : — " Dine at Nairn ; fall in with a plea- 
sant enough gentleman — Dr. Stewart, who had been 
abroad with his father in the ' Forty-Five;' and Mr. 
Falconer, a spare, irascible, warm-hearted Xorlan 
and a non-juror.' ' He passed by Kinloss, where 
Edward the First halted in his conquering march, 
intimidated as much by wild woods and savage hills 
as by the warlike people. He admired in Elgin the 
remains of Scotland's noblest cathedral, and examined 
at Forres the enormous slab of grey stone, in shape 
resembling a sword-blade, erected as a monument of 
peace between Sweno of Denmark, and Malcolm 
II. Something like sculptures on the sides, anti- 



176 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

quarians aver, intimate a drawn battle and a treaty 
of peace. — " Mr. Brodie tells me," says the Poet, 
" that the moor where Shakspeare lays Macbeth's 
witch-meeting is still haunted, and that the country 
folk won't pass it by night." 

On reaching Fochabers, the Poet left his com- 
panion at an inn, and went to pay his respects to 
the Duke and Duchess of Gordon, to whose splendid 
mansion the village is as a suburb. — " He was re- 
ceived," says Currie, " with the utmost hospitality 
and kindness ; and the family being about to sit 
down to dinner, he was invited to take his place at 
table as a matter of course. This invitation he 
accepted, and after drinking a few glasses of wine 
he rose up, and proposed to withdraw On being 
pressed to stay, he mentioned for the first time, his 
engagement with his fellow-traveller ; and, his noble 
host offering to send a servant to conduct Mr. Nicol 
to the castle, Burns insisted on undertaking that 
office himself: he was, however, accompanied by a 
gentleman, a particular acquaintance of the Duke, 
by whom the invitation was delivered in all the forms 
of politeness." They found Nicol in a foaming pas- 
sion : in vain the Poet soothed, explained, expostu- 
lated ; he refused all apology, and kept striding up 
and down the streets of Fochabers, cursing the post- 
illions for not yoking the horses and hurrying him 
away. Burns, it is said, eyed the irascible pedagogue 
for a moment, as if deciding whether he should con- 
front him w T ith fury equal to his own, or quietly seat 
himself in his own nook of the chaise and proceed 
southward. He chose the latter alternative, and 
turned his back on Castle-Gordon with a vexation 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 177 

he sought not to conceal. The rough temper of his 
companion did not, however, prevent him from soli- 
citing the muse for a song in honour of The Gordon ; 
but the muse seems to have been infected with the 
mood of Xicol ; she spoke, but not happily. He 
says in his journal — " Cross Spey to Fochabers ; fine 
palace, worthy of the generous proprietor. The 
Duke makes me happier than ever man did — noble, 
princely, yet mild, condescending and affable ; gay 
and kind : the Duchess, witty and sensible — God 
bless them !" 

The visit of Burns to Castle-Gordon was not 
altogether one of curiosity or chance. The Duchess 
desired to befriend the Poet ; she spoke of his 
merits in the north, and praised his poems in the 
south, in coteries where their language was dark and 
mystical. Her friend, Henry Addington, now Vis- 
count Sidmouth, saw in the verses of the rustic 
bard a spontaneous vigour of expression, and a 
glowing richness of language, all but rivalling Shak- 
speare. He talked of them among the titled and 
enthusiastic, and took pleasure in quoting them to 
Pitt and to Melville. This was not unknown to the 
Duchess : she invited him to Castle- Gordon, and 
promised him the company of Burns and Beattie. 
The future premier was unable to accept the invita- 
tion ; but wrote and forwarded, it is said, these me- 
morable lines — memorable as the first indication of 
that deep love which England now entertains for the 
genius of Burns : — 

" Yes ! pride of Scotia's favoured plains, 'tis thine 
The warmest feelings of the heart to move ; 
To bid it throb with sympathy divine, 
To glow with friendship, or to melt with love. 

VOL. I. N 



178 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

'« What though each morning sees thee rise to toil ; 
Tho' Plenty on thy cot no blessing showers, 
Yet Independence cheers thee with her smile, 
And Fancy strews thy moorland with her flowers. 

(t And dost thou blame the impartial will of Heaven, 
Untaught of life the good and ill to scan ! 
To thee the Muse's choicest wreath is given ; 

To thee the genuine dignity of man : 
Then to the want of worldly gear resign' d, 
Be grateful for the wealth of thy exhaustless mind." 

Aberdeen the Poet calls a lazy town, contrary to 
the general opinion of Scotland. Here he met with 
Bishop Skinner, son of the author of Tullochgorum. 
— " A man," he says, " whose venerable manner is 
the most marked of any in so young a man. Near 
Stonehive, the coast a good deal romantic — meet my 
relations. Robert Burns, writer in Stonehive, one 
of those who love fun, a gill, and a joke ; his wife, 
sweet and hospitable, without any affectation." He 
now directed his steps to Muthie, and visited the 
caverns on its wild romantic coast ; he stopped for 
an hour to examine Arbroath Abbey ; passed through 
Dundee — " a low-lying but pleasant town," — and 
having examined Broughty Castle on the banks of 
the Tay, he went " through," continues his journal, 
" the rich harvests and fine hedge-rows of the Carse 
of Gowrie ; along the romantic margin of the Gram- 
pian Hills to the fruitful, woody, hilly country which 
encloses Perth." In going up Strathern he visited 
the banks of Endermay, famous in song ; then 
mused awhile on the scene made memorable by the 
affecting story of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray ; and, 
finally, hurried to Queensferry, " through a cold, 
barren country." He parted with the north in a 
better mood in his last than in his first journey ; he 
had been every where, save at Arbruchil, kindly 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 179 

received ; chief had vied with chief in doing him 
honour, and though he took hut some twenty and 
odd days to this extensive tour, he had seen, ob- 
served, and imbibed so much of the mountain 
spirit as coloured many of his future lyrics. He 
took farewell of the north in character. On passing 
the Lowland line he turned about and exclaimed : — 

* ' When death's dark stream I ferry o'er, 
A day that surely shall come, 
In Heaven itself I'll ask no more 
Than just a Highland welcome." 

Having looked leisurely over the farms which still 
awaited his offer on Dalswinton estate, and re- 
mained a week or two with his mother at Mauch- 
line, Burns proceeded to Edinburgh for the purpose 
of arranging his affairs with Creech : a sharp and yet 
dilatory person. He entertained a hope, too, that 
some of the leading men of Scotland would find him 
a task less alien to his feelings than farming, which 
in those days yielded but a bare subsistence ; and as 
he had been acceptable to them before, he expected 
to be no less so now, when the world had sanctioned 
their praise. His bookseller had distant correspon- 
dents to consult, and the proceeds of a large edition 
to calculate ; and this was the work of time. The 
patronage, too, which the Poet anticipated, required 
leisure ; the great must not be pressed w r ith eager 
solicitude by the poor and the dependant ; their 
deeds of generosity must be allowed to come in their 
own time and season, and seem the offspring of their 
own natures. 

The active spirit of Burns could not be idle : he 
addressed himself to the two-fold business of love 
and verse. I have related the success of his poetic 
n2 



180 . THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

homage to Charlotte Hamilton ; she had passed 
from his memory, when, in December 30, 1787, he 
thus wrote to his friend Richard Brown, mariner : — 
" I am just the same will-o'-wisp being I used to 
be ; about the first and fourth quarters of the moon, 
I generally set in for the trade-wind of wisdom ; 
but about the full and the change I am the luckless 
victim of mad tornadoes which blow me into chaos. 
Almighty love still reigns and revels in my bosom, 
and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for 
a young Edinburgh widow. My highland dirk, 
that used to hang beside my crutches, I have gravely 
removed into a neighbouring closet, the key of 
which I cannot command in case of spring- tide 
paroxysms. You may guess of her wit by the 
verses which she sent me the other day: — 

" Talk not of love ; it gives me pain : 
For love has been my foe ; 
He bound me with an iron chain, 
And plunged me deep in woe." 

This Edinburgh beauty was the Mrs. Mac. of the 
Poet's toasts when the wine circulated — the ac- 
complished Clarinda, to whom, under the name of 
Sylvander, he addressed so much prose and verse. 
This " mistress of the Poet's soul and queen of 
poetesses," could not be otherwise than tolerant in 
her taste if she sympathized in the affected strains 
which he offered at the altar of her beauty. His prose 
is cumbrous and his verse laboured : there are, it is 
true, passages of natural feeling and sentiments 
sometimes of a high order, but in general his rap- 
tures are artificial and his sensibility assumed. He 
puts himself into strange postures and picturesque 
positions, and feels imaginary pains to correspond ; 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 181 

lie wounds himself to shew how readily the sores of 
love can be mended, and flogs his body like a de- 
votee to obtain the compassion of his patron saint. 
Nor is this all ; in his addresses he is often auda- 
ciously bold ; he wants tenderness, too, and some- 
times taste : — 

" In vain would Prudence with her decent sneer, 
Point to a censuring world, and bid me fear : 
Above that world on wings of love I rise, 
I know its worst, and can that worst despise. 
Wrong'd, slander'd, shunned, unpitied, unredrest, 
The mock'd quotation of the scorner's jest, 
Let prudence direst bodements on me fall — 
Clarinda, rich reward ! o'erpays them all." 

These lines are sufficiently forward, and could not 
but be painful to Mrs. M c Lehose unless she smiled 
on them as the fantastic effusions of a pastoral pla- 
tonism. In another part of the same poem he vows, 

" By all on high adoring mortals know, 
By all the conscious villain fears below," 

to love her while wood grows and water runs, ac- 
cording to the tenure of entailed property. 

It is some apology for the Poet, perhaps, that 
these compositions, which I am unwilling to regard 
as serious—and which formed in the opinion of James 
Grahame, the poet, " a romance of real platonic at- 
tachment" — were produced in the painful 'leisure 
which a bruised limb afforded him ; the lady to 
whom they were addressed, now and then wrote to the 
crippled Bard, and diverted him with her wit though 
she refused to soothe him with her presence. It 
is true that the poem from which these lines are ex- 
tracted contains couplets presumptuous and familiar, 
and asserts that they were commended by his" fair 
correspondent ; but this cannot well be believed by 



182 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

those who draw conclusions from the general spirit 
of the letters. Those who know Clarinda cannot 
but feel that Burns thought of her when he said, 
" People of nice sensibility and generous minds have 
a certain intrinsic dignity which fires at being trifled 
with or lowered, or even too closely approached." 
Yet cheered as he was by beauty, and praised as a 
poet from " Maidenkirk to John o' Groats," the 
Poet was any thing but happy. " I have a hundred 
times wished," he says in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 
" that one could resign life as an officer resigns his 
commission ; for I would not take in any poor igno- 
rant wretch by selling out. Lately I was a six- 
penny private, and, God knows, a miserable soldier 
enough ; now I march to the campaign a starving 
cadet, a little more conspicuously wretched." 

During the abode of Burns in Edinburgh, John- 
son commenced his ■" Musical Museum," the object 
of which was to unite the songs and the music of 
Scotland in one general collection. The proprietor, 
a man of more enthusiasm than knowledge, inserted 
in his first volume, published in June, 1787, several 
airs of at least doubtful origin, and several songs of 
more than doubtful merit : before he commenced the 
second volume, he had acquired the help of Burns ; 
indeed, the first bears marks of his hand. " Green 
grow the Rashes " is an acknowledged production, 
and " Bonnie Dundee" carries the peculiar impress 
of his genius : — 

" My blessings upon that sweet wee lippie ; 
My blessings upon that bonnie e'e bree ; 
Thy smiles are sae like my blythe soger laddie, 
Thou's ay be dearer and dearer to me." 

To the second volume, published in February, 1788, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 183 

Burns contributed the preface, and no less than thirty 
lyrics. In the former he says, " The songs con- 
tained in this volume, both music and poetry, are 
all of them the work of Scotchmen. Wherever the old 
words could be recovered, they have been preferred; 
both as generally suiting better the genius of the 
tunes, and to preserve the productions of those 
earlier sons of the Scottish muses. Ignorance and 
prejudice may, perhaps, affect to sneer at the sim- ' 
plicity of the poetry or music of some of these 
pieces ; but their having been for ages the favourites 
of nature's judges, the common people, was to the 
editor a sufficient test of their merit." 

Most of the songs which Burns contributed are 
of great merit. " To the Weavers gin ye go " is 
the homely song of a country lass who went to 
warp a web, and forgot her errand ; for — 

" A bonnie westlin weaver lad 
Sat working at his loom, 
He took rny heart as wi' a net 
In every knot and thrum. ' 

It relates, I have heard, the story of one of his 
rustic sweethearts. " Whistle an' I'll come to you, 
my lad " is an imperfect version of one of his hap- 
piest songs. The idea is old — and some of the words. 
The verse which he added will ever be new : — . 

" Come down the back stairs when ye come to court me; 
Come down the back stairs when ye come to court me ; 
Come down the back stairs, and let naebody see, 
And come as ye were na coming to me." 

He loved to eke out the old melodies of Cale- 
donia. " I'm o'er young to marry yet " is sung by 
a very young lady, who upbraids her suitor with a 
design to carry her from her mother, and put her 
into the company of a strange man during the 



184 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

lonely nights of winter. She, however, discovers a 

remedy : — 

" Fu' loud and shrill the frosty wind 

Blaws through the leafless timmer, sir ; 
But if ye' 11 come this gate again, 
I'll aulder be gin simmer, sir." 

" The Birks of Aberfeldy " originated in an old 
strain called the Birks of Abergeldie, but surpasses 
it as far as sunshine excels candlelight. The same 
may be said of " Macpherson's Farewell." Some- 
thing of the rudiments of this bold rant may be 
found in old verses of the same name ; but they are, 
in comparison, as barley-chaff is to gold-sand. The 
hero of the song, a musician and noted freebooter, 
was taken red-hand, and hurried to execution. 
When the rope was round his neck, he sent for his 
favourite riddle, played the air, called after him, 
Macpherson's Rant, offered the instrument in vain 
to any one who could play the tune, then broke it 
over the hangman's head, and flung himself from the 
ladder. His song is in character, wild, daring, and 
revengeful : — 

" O what is death but parting breath ? 
On many a bloody plain 
I've dared his face, and in this place 

I scorn him yet again. 
Untie these bands from off my hands, 

And bring to me my sword, 
And there's no a man in all Scotland, 
But I'll brave him at a word." 

The genius of the north had an influence over the 
Poet's musings in other compositions. In " The 
Highland Lassie," the lover complains of want of 
wealth, and the faithlessness of fortune, but strong 
in affection, declares, 

" For her I'll dare the billows roar, 
For her 111 trace a distant shore, 
That Indian wealth may lustre throw 
Around my Highland lassie, O." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 185 

In " The Northern Lass " he utters similar senti- 
ments : and in " Braw, braw lads of Galla Water," 
his hand may be traced by the curious in Scottish 
song ; it is too kenspeckle to be denied : — 

M Sae fair her hair, sae brent her brow, 
Sae bonnie blue her een my dearie, 
Sae white her teeth, sae sweet her mou, 
The mair I look, she's mair my dearie." 

" Stay, my Charmer," if not of highland extrac- 
tion, owes its air to the north. There are but eight 
lines ; but he excelled in saying much in small 
compass : — 

™ By my love so ill requited : 
By the faith you fondly plighted, 
By the pangs of lover's slighted, 
Do not, do not leave me so." 

To a Jacobite feeling we owe that fine strain " Strath - 
allan's Lament." — " This air," says the Poet, " is 
the composition of one of the worthiest and best men 
living, Allan Masterton. As he and I were both 
sprouts of jacobitism, we agreed to dedicate the 
words and air to that cause." The song is supposed 
to be the " Goodnight" of James Drummond, Vis- 
count of Strathallan, who escaped to France from 
Culloden. Even in the days of Burns, the lan- 
guage which the exile is made to utter, could not 
but be unacceptable to many : — 

" In the cause of right engaged, * ■ 

Wrongs injurious to redress, 
Honour's war we strongly waged, 
But the heavens denied success." 

The amended songs are numerous. In his has- 
tiest touches there is something always which no 
hand but that of Burns could communicate. "How 
long and dreary is the night !" is mostly his ; the 
last verse will go to many hearts : — 



186 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" How slow ye move, ye heavy hours, 
As ye were wae and wearie ! 
It was na sae ye glinted by, 
When I was wi' my dearie." 

The hoary wooer in " To daunton me," is sketch- 
ed with all the scornful spirit of a lady who has set 
her heart on a younger person : — 

" He hirples twa-fauld as he dow, 
Wi* his toothless gab and his auld bald pow, 
And the rain dreeps frae his red-bleer'd ee, 
That auld man shall never daunton me." 

In " Bonnie Peggie Alison," the Poet indulges 
in such licence of language as may startle the fasti- 
dious ; yet it is but the rapture of an enthusiastic 
heart : — 

" When in my arms wi' a' thy charms, 
I clasp my countless treasure, 
I seek nae mair 'o heaven to share 
Than sic a moment's pleasure " 

" The Dusty Miller" exhibits a few of his happy 
emendations. A young woman, in remembering the 
attractions of a lover who wins a shilling before he 
spends a groat, sings with arch simplicity — 

" Dusty was the coat, 
Duty was the colour, 
Dusty was the kiss 
I got frae the miller." 

He withheld his name from " Theniel Menzies' 
bonny Mary." The buoyancy of the language, and 
the natural truth of the delineation must be felt by 
all who know what lyric composition is : — 

" Her een sae bright, her brow sae white, 
Her haffet locks as brown's a berry, 
And aye they dimpled wi' a smile, 
The rosy cheeks o' bonny Mary." 

" The Banks of the Devon," " Raving winds 
around her blowing," " Musing on the roaring 
ocean," " A Rose-bud by my early walk," and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 187 

11 Where braving angry Winter's storms," were all 
published in the Poet's name. In the first, he paid 
homage to the charms of Charlotte Hamilton ; and 
in the latter, to the gentle and winning graces of 
Margaret Chalmers. These are more finished and 
equal, yet scarcely so happy as some of the hasty 
and perhaps inconsiderate snatches with which he 
eked out the fragmentary strains of the old min- 
strels. 

That his heart was much with this sort of work, 
we may gather from his letter to Mrs. Rose of Kil- 
ravock, 17th Feb. 1788 : — " I am assisting a friend 
in a collection of Scottish songs set to their proper 
tunes. Every air worth preserving is to be included. 
Among others, I have given " Morag," and some 
few Highland airs which pleased me most, a dress 
which will be more generally known, though far — 
far inferior in real merit." He wrote to his friends — 
east, west, north, and south, for airs and verses for 
the Museum. From his old comrade M'Candlish he 
begged " Pompey's Ghost," by the unfortunate 
Lowe — from Skinner of Linshart : from Dr. Black- 
lock he entreated communications; and he drew 
upon his own memory, for some of those antique 
strains picked up from the singing of his mother or 
the maidens of Ayrshire. 

To those who charge Burns with idleness or dis- 
sipation during this winter in Edinburgh, many will 
think thirty songs an answer sufficient, without 
taking into consideration his maimed limb, and his 
numerous letters to Clarinda. He had other matters, 
too, on his mind ; I have said that he exhibited early 
symptoms of jacobitism ; his highland tours and 



188 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

conversations with the chiefs and ladies of the north, 
strengthened a liking which he seems to have in- 
herited from his fathers. On the 31st day of Decem- 
ber, 1787, he was present at a meeting to celebrate 
the birth-day of the last of the race of our native 
princes, the unfortunate Charles Edward : he acted 
the part of laureate on the occasion, and recited an 
ode, lamenting the past, sympathizing in the present, 
and prophesying retribution for the future. Like 
almost all the verse for which Burns taxed his spirit, 
the ode is cumbrous and inflated ; neither the fiery 
impetuosity of Graham, nor the calm intrepidity of 
Balmerino inspired him — 

< < Ye honoured mighty dead ! 
Who nobly perished in the glorious cause, 
Your king, your country, and your laws : 

From great Dundee, who, smiling victory led, 

And fell a martyr in her arms ; 

What breast of northern ice but warms 
To bold Balmerino's undying name ? 
Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven's high flame, 
Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim \" 

Who were the Poet's associates at this anniver- 
sary no one has told us. The white rose of jacobitism 
was worn in those days by many people of rank and 
condition: it was the cognizance of all who re- 
gretted that Scotland had ceased to be a separate 
kingdom, had lost the dignity of her parliament, 
the honours of her monarchy, and was compelled to 
send her children into another land to represent her 
interests, where they were exposed to the scoffs and 
insults of a proud and haughty people. This was 
the jacobitism of Burns ; though he sung of the 
woes of Drumossie, and the sufferings of Prince 
Charles, he had no desire to see the ancient line re- 
stored, and the Hanoverian dynasty expelled, since 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 189 

he knew that every step towards the throne would 
be on a bloody corse. His heart clung to the 
immediate descendants of Bruce, and it is probable 
that he never studied the mystery of a consti- 
tution, which, to secure our freedom, raised a prince 
to the throne, who could neither speak our language, 
nor comprehend the genius of the people. His 
whole affections were concentrated on his native 
land : his whole object was to do it honour : for 
this he sacrificed his time ; to this he dedicated his 
genius , and on this, though poor, he laid out some 
of the little wealth he had. He saw with sorrow- 
that the dust of Fergusson, the poet, lay among 
the ignoble dead, and desired to raise a memorial, 
such as might guide the steps of the lovers of Scot- 
tish song to the grave of his brother Bard. This 
humble wish was graciously granted by the autho- 
rities of the Canongate kirk, and he raised a monu- 
mental stone, which is still to be seen among the 
thick-piled gravestones of the burial-ground. A 
communication from Delhi informs me, that the 
price paid by the Poet was 5l. 9 and that the work 
was executed by Mr. Burn, father of the present 
distinguished architect. 

That Burns could write so many songs is to be 
marvelled at, when we reflect that, during most of 
the time, a sort of civil war existed between him 
and his bookseller, of which many symptoms are 
visible in his printed and manuscript correspond- 
ence. — "I have broke measures," he says, "with 
Creech, and last week I wrote him a frosty keen 
letter. He replied in terms of chastisement, and 
promised me, upon his honour, that I should have 



190 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS, 

the account on Monday ; but this is Tuesday, and 
yet I have not heard a word from him. God have 
mercy on me ! a poor, damned, incautious, duped, 
unfortunate fool ! The sport, the miserable victim 
of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, 
agonizing sensibility, and bedlam passions — 

* I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to die.' 

I have this moment got a hint. I fear I am some- 
thing like undone ; but I hope for the best. Come 
stubborn pride and unshrinking resolution ! accom- 
pany me through this, to me, miserable world. You 
must not desert me ! Your friendship I think I can 
count on, though I should date my letters from a 
marching regiment. Early in life, and all my life, 
I reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope. 
Seriously though, life at present presents me with 
but a melancholy path ; but my limb will soon be 
sound, and I shall struggle on." 

These expressions refer to whispers which had 
reached his ear about the solvency of Creech, and 
are contained in a letter to Margaret Chalmers : 
the conduct of his bookseller dwelt long on his 
mind; we find him, on the 4th of January, 1789, 
thus writing to Dr. Moore. — "I cannot boast about 
Creech's ingenuous dealing ; he kept me hanging 
on about Edinburgh from the 7th of August until 
the 13th of April, 1788, before he would conde- 
scend to give me a statement of affairs ; nor had 
I got it even then, but for an angry letter 1 wrote 
him which irritated his pride. I could not a ' tale' 
but a detail ' unfold ;' but what am I that I should 
speak against the Lord's anointed bailie of Edin- 
burgh ! I give you this information, but I give 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

it to yourself only, for I am still much in the g 
tleman's mercy. Perhaps I injure the man in tht 
idea I am sometimes tempted to have of him. God 
forbid I should ! A little time will try, for in a 
month I shall go to town to wind up the business if 
possible." That Creech, after long evasion, be- 
haved honourably and liberally to the impatient 
Poet, is well enough known to the world ; I record 
these complaints to vindicate the latter from the 
charge of having loitered needlessly in Edinburgh, 
and refrained from putting the ploughshare in the 
ground, which was offered for his acceptance. 

Burns now set seriously about considering his 
future prospects. Having settled with Creech, he 
wrote to Mr. Miller that he would accept his offer 
with regard to the farm ; he lent two hundred pounds 
to his brother Gilbert, to enable him to mend him- 
self in the world and support his mother, whom he 
tenderly loved ; and with five hundred pounds 
in his pocket, he resolved to unite himself to 
Jean Armour, carry her to the banks of the Xith, and 
follow the plough and the muses. What he had seen 
and endured in Edinburgh during his second visit, 
admonished him regarding the reed on which he 
leant, when he hoped for a place of profit and honour 
from the aristocracy on account of his genius. On 
his first appearance the doors of the nobility opened 
spontaneous, " on golden hinges turning," and he 
ate spiced meats and drank rare wines, interchanging 
nods and smiles with "high dukes and mighty earls." - 
A colder reception awaited his second coming ; the 
doors of lords and ladies opened with a tardy cour- 
tesy ; he was received with a cold and measured state- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

oS, was seldom requested to stop, seldomer to 
.epeat his visit ; and one of his companions used 
to relate with what indignant feeling the Poet re- 
counted his fruitless calls and his uncordial recep- 
tions in the good town of Edinburgh. That he had 
high hopes is well known ; there were not wanting 
friends to whisper that lordly, nay, royal patronage 
was certain ; nor were such expectations at all un- 
reasonable — but genius is not the passport to patron- 
age; he was allied to no noble family, and could 
not come forward under the shelter of a golden wing ; 
he was unconnected with any party which could 
pretend to political influence, and who had power 
either to retard or forward a ministerial measure ; 
moreover, he was one of those " whim-inspired" per- 
sons of whom his inimitable " Bard's Epitaph" sings : — 

« Owre fast for thought, owrehot for rule, 
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool." 

His case was, therefore, next to hopeless ; he asked 
for nothing, and nothing was offered, though men 
of rank and power were aware that he was unfitted 
with an aim in life — that poetry alone could not 
sustain him, and that he must go back to the 
flail and the furrow. He went to Edinburgh, strong 
in the belief that genius such as his would raise him 
in society; but he came- not back without a sour- 
ness of spirit and a bitterness of feeling. 

The pride of Burns, which was great, would not 
allow him to complain, and his ambition, which 
was still greater, hindered him from regarding his 
condition as yet hopeless. When he complained at 
all, he did not make his moan to man ; his letters to 
his companions or his friends are sometimes stern, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 193 

fierce, and full of defiance ; lie uttered his lament in 
the ear of woman, and seemed to be soothed with 
her attention and her sympathy. — " When I must 
escape into a corner," he says bitterly to Mrs. Dun- 
lop, " lest the rattling equipage of some gaping 
blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am 
tempted to exclaim, what merits has he had, or what 
demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, 
that he is ushered into this state of being with the 
sceptre of rule and the key of riches in his puny 
fist, and I am kicked into the world the sport of 
folly or the victim of pride ? I have read some- 
where of a monarch who was so out of humour with 
the Ptolomean system of astronomy, that he said, 
had he been of the Creator's council, he could have 
saved him a great deal of labour and absurdity. I 
will not defend this blasphemous speech ; but often, 
as I have glided with humble stealth through the 
pomp of Prince's-street, it has suggested itself to me, 
as an improvement on the present human figure, 
that a man, in proportion to his own conceit of his 
consequence in the world, could have pushed him- 
self out as a snail pushes out his horns, or as we 
draw out a perspective. This would enable us at 
once to adjust the ceremonials in making a bow, or 
making way to a great man, and that, too, within a 
second of the precise spherical angle of reverence, or 
an inch of the particular point of respectful distance, 
which the important creature himself requires." The 
condition of the Poet made, we fear, such bitter re- 
flections matters of frequent recurrence. The learned 
authors — and Edinburgh swarmed with them — claim- 
ed rank above the inspired clod of the valley ; the 
vol. i. o 



194 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

gentry asserted such superiority as their natural 
inheritance ; the nobility held their elevation by act 
of parliament or the grace of majesty ; and none of 
them were prepared to accept the brotherhood of one 
who held the patent of his honours immediately 
from nature. 

In the course of the winter Burns resolved, since 
no better might be, to unite the farmer with the 
poet ; some one persuaded him that to both he could 
join the gauger. So soon as this possessed his fancy, 
he determined to beg the humble boon from his 
patrons, and as no one seemed more likely to be 
kind than the Earl of Glencairn, he addressed him 
anxiously : — " I have weighed — long and seriously 
weighed — my situation. I wish to get into the ex- 
cise : I am told your lordship's interest will easily 
procure me the grant from the commissioners ; and 
your lordship's patronage and goodness, which have 
already rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness, and 
exile, embolden me to ask that* interest. You have 
likewise put it in my power to save the little tie of 
home that sheltered an aged mother, two brothers, 
and three sisters from destruction. I am ill quali- 
fied to dog the heels of greatness with the imper- 
tinence of solicitation, and tremble nearly as much 
at the thought of the cold promise as the cold 
denial." What the earl did in this matter is un- 
known ; his conduct seems to have satisfied Burns, 
for at his death, which soon followed, he poured 
out a poetic lament full of the most touching sensi- 
bility. 

The Excise commission came in an unlooked for 
way. While Burns was laid up with his crushed 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 195 

limb, he was attended by Alexander Wood, surgeon, 
a gentleman still affectionately remembered as "kind 
old Sandy Wood :" to him the Poet had mentioned 
his desire to obtain a situation in the Excise. Wood 
went to work, and so bestirred himself, that Gra- 
ham of Fintry put his name on the roll of excise- 
men at once. The Poet, who, like the hero of his 
own inimitable song, was 

" Contented wi' little, and can tie wi' mair," 

communicated this stroke of what he called good 
fortune to Margaret Chalmers in these words : — " I 
have entered into the Excise. I go to the west for 
about three weeks and then return to Edinburgh for 
six weeks' instructions. I have chosen this, my 
dear friend, after mature deliberation. The ques- 
tion is not at what door of fortune's palace shall we 
enter in, but what doors does she open for us. I 
was not likely to get any thing to do. I got this 
without hanging- on or mortifying solicitation : it 
is immediate bread, and though poor in compari- 
son of the last eighteen months of my existence, 
'tis luxury in comparison of all my preceding 
life." 

Nor did he withhold the tidings of his appoint- 
ment from Mrs. Dunlop : — " I thought thirty-five 
pounds a year no bad dernier resort for a poor poet, 
if Fortune, in her jade tricks should kick him 
down from the little eminence to which she has 
lately helped him up." Gauger is a word of mean 
sound, nor is the calling a popular one ; yet the 
situation is neither so humble, nor the emolu- 
ments so trifling, as some of the Poet's southern 
admirers have supposed. A gauger's income in 

o2 



196 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

those days, on the banks of Nith, was equal to three 
hundred a year at present in London ; an excise 
officer is the companion of gentlemen ; he is usually 
a well-informed person, and altogether fifty per 
cent, above the ordinary excise officers on the 
banks of the Thames. It is^true, that Burns some- 
times speaks with levity of his situation, but that is 
no proof of his contempt for it; he loved in verse to 
hover between jest and earnest ; and if he thought 
peevishly about it at all, it was in comparison of a 
place such as his genius merited. Having secured 
the excise appointment, and on the 13th of March, 
1788, bargained with Mr. Miller of Dalswinton for 
the farm of Ellisland, in Nithsdale, he resolved to 
bid Edinburgh farewell. 

The Poet, it is said, visited the graves of Ram- 
say and Fergusson, then took leave of some friends — 
the Earl of Glencairn was one — by letter, and waited 
upon others : among the latter were Blair, Stewart, 
Tytler, Mackenzie, and Blacklock. I have heard 
that his reception was not so cordial as formally ; 
it would seem that his free way of speaking and free 
way of living, had touched them somewhat. That 
Burns wrote joyous letters, uttered unguarded 
speeches when the wine-cup went round, and was 
now and then to be found in the company of writers* 
clerks, country lairds, and west country farmers, is 
very true, and could not well be otherwise. He 
was educated in a less courtly school than professors 
and divines : mechanics and farmers had been his 
associates from his cradle. The language of a 
farmer's fire-side is less polished and more natural 
than that of the college ; he spoke the language of 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 197 

a different class of people, and he kept their com- 
pany because he was one of them. Genius had 
ranked him with the highest ; but it was the plea- 
sure of fortune or his country to keep him at the 
plough. The man who got his education in the 
furrowed field — whose eloquence sprung from the 
barn and the forge, 

" When ploughmen gather with their graith," 

and who wrote not classic verse, but " hamely 
western jingle," could not by any possibility please, 
by his conversation or his way of life, the polished, 
the polite, and the fastidious. That Burns ap- 
peared fierce and rude in their eyes, is as true as 
that they seemed to him " white curd of asses' 
milk," — learnedly dull and hypocritically cour- 
teous. 

It was not unknown to the literati and the lords 
of Edinburgh, that Burns kept a memorandum- 
book, in which he not only noted down his Border 
and his Highland tours, but introduced full-length 
portraits of all the eminent persons whom he chanced 
to meet or with whom he associated. — " I will 
sketch/' said he, " every character that any way 
strikes me, to the best of my power, with unshrink- 
ing justice. I will insert anecdotes and take down 
remarks in the old law-phrase, without feud or favour. 
My own private story likewise, my love adventures, 
my rambles ; the frowns and smiles of fortune on 
my hardship ; my poems and fragments, that must 
never see the light shall be occasionally inserted." 
He kept this formidable book so little of a secret, 
that he allowed a visiter sometimes to take a look at 
his gallery of portraits, and as he distributed light 



198 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

and shade with equal freedom and force, it was soon 
bruited abroad that Burns had drawn stern like- 
nesses of his chief friends and benefactors. This 
book is not now to be found ; it was carried away 
from the Poet's lodgings by one of his visiters, who 
refused to restore it — enlisted in the artillery — sailed 
for Gibraltar, and died about the year 1800. From 
w r hat remains, the following characters are extracted ; 
they make us regret the loss of the rest : — 

" With Dr. Blair I am much at my ease ; I never 
respect him with humble veneration ; but when he 
kindly interests himself in my welfare — or, still 
more, when he descends from his pinnacle and meets 
me on equal ground in conversation, my heart over- 
flows with what is called liking. When he neglects 
me for the mere* carcase of greatness, or when his 
eye measures the difference of our points of eleva- 
tion. I say to myself, with scarcely any emotion, 
what do I care for him or his pomp either ? It is 
not easy forming an exact judgment of any one, but 
in my opinion, Dr. Blair is merely an astonishing 
proof w T hat industry and application can do. Na- 
tural parts, like his, are frequently to be met with ; 
his vanity is proverbially known among his acquaint- 
ance, but he is justly at the head of what may be 
called fine writing ; and a critic of the first, the very 
first rank in prose ; even in poetry, a bard of na- 
ture's making can alone take the pass of him. He 
has a heart not of the very finest water, but far from 
being an ordinary one." 

Other characters were sketched with still greater 
freedom. Here is his satiric portrait of a celebrated 
lawyer : — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 199 

t( He clench' d his pamphlets in his fist, 

He quoted an' he hinted, 
Till in a declamation-mist 

His argument he tint it ; 
He graped for't, he gaped for't, 

He found it was awa, man, 
And when his common-sense came short, 

He eked it out wi' law, man." 

The literati of Edinburgh were not displeased, it 
is likely, when he went away ; nor were the titled 
part of the community without their share in this 
silent rejoicing ; his presence was a reproach to 
them. " The illustrious of his native land, from 
whom he looked for patronage," had proved that 
they had the carcase of greatness, but wanted the 
soul : they subscribed for his poems, and looked on 
their generosity as "an alms could keep a god 
alive." He turned his back on Edinburgh, and from 
that time forward scarcely counted that man his 
friend, who spoke of titled persons in his presence. 
Whilst sailing on pleasure's sea in a gilded barge, 
with perfumed and lordly company, he was, in the 
midst of his enjoyment, thrown roughly overboard, 
and had to swim to a barren shore, or sink for 
ever. 

Burns now turned his steps westward. In one of 
his desponding moods he had lately said to a corres- 
pondent, " There are just two creatures that I would 
envy — a horse in his wild state traversing the forests 
of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert shores of 
Europe; the one has not a wish without enjoyment, 
the other has neither wish nor fear." In the same 
mingled spirit of despair and pleasure he complains — 
"I lie so miserably open to the inroads and incur- 
sions of a mischievous, light-armed, well-mounted 



200 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

banditti, under the banners of imagination, whim, 
caprice and passion ; and the heavy-armed veteran 
regulars of wisdom, prudence, and forethought, move 
so very, very slow, that I am almost in a state of 
perpetual warfare, and, alas ! frequent defeat." The 
thoughts of home, of a settled purpose in life, gave 
him a silent gladness of heart, such as he had never 
before known ; and, to use his own words"; he moved 
homeward with as much hilarity in his gait and 
countenance " as a May-frog, leaping across the 
newly harrowed ridge, enjoying the fragrance of the 
refreshed earth after the long-expected shower." 
He reached Mauchline towards the close of April : 
He was not a moment too soon ; the intercourse 
which, in his visits to Ayrshire, he had renewed with 
Jean Armour, exposed her once more to the re- 
proaches of her family; — she might say, in the 
affecting words of one whose company had brought 
both joy and woe — 

" My father put me frae his door, 

My friends they hae disown'd me a' ; 
But I hae ane will take my part— 
The bonnie lad that's far awa." 

On his arrival he took her by the hand, and was 
remarried according to the simple and effectual form 
of the laws of Scotland: — " Daddie Auld," and his 
friends of the Old-light, felt every wish to be mode- 
rate with one whose powers of derision had been 
already proved. He next introduced Mrs. Burns 
to his friends, both in person and by letter. Much 
of his correspondence of this period bears evidence 
of the peace of mind and gladness of heart which 
this two-fold act of love and generosity had brought 
to him. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 201 

To Mrs. Dunlop, he says, " I found a once 
much-loved, and still much-loved female, literally 
and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked ele- 
ments ; there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's 
happiness or misery. The most placid good-nature 
and sweetness of disposition ; a warm heart, grate- 
fully devoted with all its powers to love me ; vigorous 
health, and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best 
advantage by a more than commonly handsome 
figure ; these, I think, in a woman, may make a 
good wife, though she should never have read a page 
but the Scriptures, nor have danced in a brighter 
assembly than a penny-pay wedding. To jealousy 
or infidelity I am an equal stranger : my preser- 
vative from the first is the most thorough conscious- 
ness of her sentiments of honour and her attachment 
to me ; my antidote against the last is my long and 
deep-rooted affection for her. In housewife matters 
— in aptness to learn and activity to execute she is 
eminently mistress ; and, during my absence, she is 
regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and 
sisters in their dairy, and other rural business. The 
Muses must not be offended when I tell them the 
concerns of my wife and family will in my mind 
always take the pass ; but, I assure them, their lady- 
ships will ever come next in place. You are right 
that a bachelor state would have insured me more 
friends ; but, from a cause you will easily guess, 
conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, 
and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my 
God, would seldom have been of the number." 

On the same interesting topic he writes to Mar- 
garet Chalmers : — " I have married my Jean. I had 



202 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness 
or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle 
with so important a deposit, nor have I any cause to 
repent it. If I have not got polite tittle-tattle, mo- 
dish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sick- 
ened and disgusted with the multiform curse of 
boarding-school affectation ; and I have got the 
handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest 
constitution, and kindest heart in the country. A 
certain late publication of Scots poems she has 
perused very devoutly, and all the ballads in the 
country, as she has the finest wood-note wild I ever 
heard. I am the more particular in this lady's cha- 
racter, as I know she will henceforth have a share in 
your best wishes/' 

These letters, and others in the same strain, have 
misled Walker into the belief that Burns married 
Jean Armour from a sentiment of duty rather than 
a feeling of love ; no belief can be more imaginary. 
The unfortunate story of his affection had been told 
to the world both in prose and verse ; he was looked 
upon as one deserted by the object of his regard, 
under circumstances alike extraordinary and painful. 
That he forgave her for the sad requital of his love, 
and her relations for their severity, and sought her 
hand and their alliance, required something like 
apology to his friends. I see nothing in these matters 
out of harmony with affection and love. — " That he 
originally loved his Jean," says the Professor, " is 
not to be doubted ; but, on considering all the cir- 
cumstances of the case, it may be presumed that, 
when he first proposed marriage, it was partly from 
a desire to repair the injury of her reputation, and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 203 

that his distress, on her refusal, proceeded as much 
from wounded pride as from disappointed love." 
The best answer to this is afforded by the words of 
the Poet. He loved her, he never had ceased to 
love her ; he considered her sacrifice of him as made 
to the pious feelings and authority of her father : — 
" I can have no nearer idea," he says, " of the place 
of eternal punishment, than what I have felt in my 
own breast on her account. Never man loved, or 
rather adored, a woman more than I did her, and I 
do still love her to distraction after all." If this is 
not the language of ardent love, I know not what 
it means. 

But the Professor seems desirous of proving that 
this change in the Poet's affections was the necessary 
result of being exposed to the allurements of the 
high-bred darnes of Edinburgh. — " The three years 
that succeeded," he observes, " had opened to him 
a new scene : and the female society to which they 
had introduced him was of a description altogether 
different from any which he had formerly known." — 
" Between the man of rustic life," said Burns to 
some one after his arrival in Edinburgh, " and the 
polite world, I observed little difference. In the 
former, though unpolished by fashion, and unen- 
lightened by science, I had found much observation 
and much intelligence. But a refined and accom- 
plished woman was a being altogether new to me, 
and of which I had formed but a very inadequate 
idea." It is plain that the Poet, when he uttered 
these words, was close at the ear of one of those 
" high-exalted courteous dames," and making him- 
self acceptable to her by flattery and by eloquence. 



204 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

It is also evident that the Professor's notions of love 
were not at all poetic. To regulate our affections 
according as knowledge raises woman in the scale, is 
paying a very pretty compliment to education ; but 
it is most unjust to nature. True love pays no 
regard to such distinctions. We see a form — we see 
a face, which awaken emotions within us never 
before felt. The form is not perhaps the most per- 
fect, nor the face the most fair in the land ; yet we 
persist in admiring— in loving them : — in short, we 
have found out by the free-masonry of feeling, the 
help-mate which Heaven designed for us, and we 
woo and win our object. 

But in what were the ladies of the polished circles 
of the land superior to a well-favoured, well-formed, 
well-bred lass of low degree, who had a light foot for 
a dance, a melodious voice for a song, two witching- 
eyes, with wit at will, and who believed the man 
who loved her to be the greatest genius in the world ? 
These are captivating qualities to all, save those who 
weigh the merits of a woman in a golden balance. 
Nay, in the very thing on which the Professor ima- 
gines a high and polished dame to be strong, she 
will be found weak. The shepherd maidens and 
rustic lasses of Scotland feel, from their unsophisti- 
cated state of mind, the beauty of the poetry of 
Burns deeply and devoutly ; for once that a song 
of his is heard in the lighted hall, it is heard fifty 
times on the brook-banks and in the pastoral vallies 
of the land. 

His marriage reconciled the Poet to his wife's 
kindred : there was no wedding-portion. Armour 
was a most respectable man, but not opulent. He 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 205 

gave his daughter some small store of plenishing ; 
and, exerting his skill as a mason, wrought his al- 
ready eminent son-in-law a handsome punch-bowl 
in Inverary marble, which Burns lived to fill often, 
to the great pleasure both of himself and his friends. 
To make bridal-presents is a practice of long stand- 
ing in Scotland ; and it is to the credit of the 
personal character of the Poet that he was not 
forgotten. Mrs. Dunlop bethought her of Ellis- 
land, and gave a beautiful heifer : — another friend 
contributed a plough. The young couple from a 
love of country, ordered their furniture — plain, in- 
deed, and homely — from Morison, a wright in 
Mauchline : the farm servants, male and female, 
were hired in Ayrshire, a matter of questionable 
prudence; for the mode of cultivation is different 
from that of the west, and the cold humid bottom 
of Mossgiel bears no resemblance to the warm and 
stony loam of Ellisland. 



PART III :— ELLISLAND. 

In the month of May 1788, Burns made his ap- 
pearance as a farmer in Nithsdale ; his fame had 
flown before him, and his coming was expected. 
Ellisland is beautifully situated on the south side of 
the Nith, some six miles above Dumfries ; it joins 
the grounds of Friars- Carse on the north-west — 
the estate of Isle towards the south-east — the 
great road from Glasgow separates it from the 
hills of Dunscore ; while the Nith, a pure stream 



206 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

running over the purest gravel, divides it from 
the holms and groves of Dalswinton. The farm 
amounts to upwards of a hundred acres, and is 
part holm and part croft-land ; the former a deep 
rich loam, bears fine tall crops of wheat ; the latter, 
though two -thirds loam and one-third stones on a 
bottom of gravel, yields, when carefully cultivated, 
good crops, both of potatoes and corn ; yet to a 
stranger the soil must have looked unpromising or 
barren ; and Burns declared, after a shower had 
fallen on a field of new-sown and new-rolled barley, 
that it looked like a paved street ! 

Though he got possession of the farm in May, the 
rent did not commence till Martinmas, as the ground 
was uninclosed and the houses unbuilt. By the 
agreement, Miller granted to Burns four nineteen 
years' leases of Ellisland, at an annual rent for 
the first three years of fifty pounds, and seventy 
pounds for the remaining seventy-three years of the 
tack ; the Poet undertook, for a sum not exceeding 
three hundred pounds, to build a complete farm 
onstead, consisting of dwelling-house, barn, byre, 
stable, and sheds, and to permit the proprietor to 
plant with forest trees the scaur or precipitous bank 
along the side of the Xith, and a belt of ground 
towards Friars-Carse, of not more than two acres, in 
order to shelter the farm from the sweep of the north- 
west wind. Burns was assi ted in the choice of the 
farm, and the terms on which it was taken, by Ten- 
nant of Glenconner, one of his Ayrshire friends : 
there were other farms to be let of a superior kind on 
the estate, and those were pointed out by my father, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 207 

steward to the proprietor — a Lothian farmer of skill 
and experience — but the fine romantic look of El- 
lisland induced Barns to shut his eyes on the low- 
lying and fertile Foregirth ; upon which my father 
said, " Mr. Burns you have made a poet's — not a 
farmer's choice." 

The Poet was now a busy and happy man. He 
had houses to build, and grounds to enclose : — 
that he might be near both, he sought shelter in a 
low smoky hovel on the skirts of his farm. I remem- 
ber the house well : the floor was of clay, the rafters 
were japanned with soot : the smoke from a hearth 
fire streamed thickly out at door and window, while 
the sunshine which struggled in at those apertures 
produced a sort of twilight. There he was to be 
found by all who had curiosity or taste, with a 
table, books, and drawings before him ; sometimes 
writing letters about the land, and the people among 
whom he had dropt like a slung stone ; sometimes 
giving audience to workmen who were busy at dyk- 
ing or digging foundations ; and not unfrequently 
brushing up, as Mrs. Burns said, an old song for 
Johnson's Musical Museum. — " The hovel which I 
shelter in," said the Poet to Margaret Chalmers, 
" is pervious to every blast that blows, and every 
shower that falls ; and I am only preserved from 
being chilled to death by being suffocated with 
smoke. I do not find r. y farm that pennyworth I 
was taught to expect, but I believe in time it may 
be a saving bargain." 

If Burns had little comfort in his lodging-place, 
he seems to have been unfortunate in finding society 
to render it endurable.—" I am here," he says, " on 



208 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

my farm ; but for all that pleasurable part of life 
called social communication, I am at the very elbow 
of existence. The only things that are to be found 
in perfection in this country are stupidity and 
canting. Prose they only know in graces and 
prayers ; and the value of these they estimate as 
they do their plaiding-webs — by the ell. As for the 
Muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as 
of a poet. For my old capricious, but good-natured 
hussey of a muse — 

* By banks of Nith I sat and wept, 

When Coila I thought on ; 
In midst thereof I hung my harp 

The willow trees upon.' 

I am generally about half my time in Ayrshire with 
my ' darling Jean ; ' and then I, at lucid intervals, 
throw my horny fist across my be-cob-webbed lyre, 
much in the same manner as an old wife throws her 
hand across the spokes of her spinning-wheel." In 
the same strain — half serious and half-humorous — 
he thus writes to his friend Hugh Parker : — 

« In this strange land, this uncouth clime. 

A land unknown to prose or rhyme ; 

Where words ne'er crost the Muse's heckles, 

Nor limpit in poetic shackles ; 

A land that Prose did never view it, 

Except, when drunk, he stacher't through it. 

Here, ambush' d by the chimla cheek, 

Hid in an atmosphere of reek, 

I hear a wheel thrum i' the neuk, 

I hear it — for in vain I leuk.— 

The red peat gleams a fiery kernel, 

Enhusked by a fog infernal : 

Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures, 

1 sit and count my sins by chapters : 

For life and spunk, like other Christians, 

I'm dwindled down to mere existence, 

Nae converse but wi' Gallowa bodies, 

Wi' nae ken'd face but— Jenny Geddes.' 

Nor did his neighbours gain on him by a closer 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 209 

acquaintance. " I was yesterday," lie says, " at 
Mr. Miller's, to dinner for the first time. My re- 
ception was to my mind — from the lady of the house 
quite flattering. She sometimes hits on a couplet or 
two impromptu. She repeated one or two to the 
admiration of all present ; my suffrage, as a profes- 
sional man, was expected; I for once went agonizing 
over the belly of my conscience. Pardon me, my 
adored household gods, independence of spirit and 
integrity of soul ! In the course of the conversation, 
Johnson's Musical Museum, a collection of Scottish 
songs, with the music, was talked of. We got a 
song on the harpsichord, beginning 

* Raving winds around her blowing.' 

The air was much admired : the lady of the house 
asked me whose were the words — ' Mine, madam ; 
they are, indeed, my very best verses.' She took 
not the smallest notice of them. The old Scottish 
proverb says well — * King's chaff is better than 
other folk's corn.' I was going to make a New 
Testament quotation about ' casting pearls ;' but that 
would be too virulent, for the lady is actually a 
woman of sense and taste." 

The sooty shealing in which the Poet found refuge 
seems to have infected his whole atmosphere of 
thought ; the Maxwells, the Kirkpatricks, and Dal- 
zells were fit companions for any man in Scotland in 
point of courtesy and information, and they were 
almost his neighbours ; Biddeli of Friars-Carse, an 
accomplished antiquarian, lived next door ; and Jean 
Lindsay, and her husband Patrick Miller, were no 
ordinary people. The former was beautiful and 

vol. i. p 



210 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

accomplished ; wrote easy and graceful verses, and 
had a natural dignity in her manners which became 
her station : the latter was one of the most remark- 
able men of his time : an improver and inventor, and 
the first who applied steam to the purposes of navi- 
gation. Burns was resolved to be discontented — at 
least on paper — for in his conversation he exhibited 
no symptoms of the kind ; but talked, laughed, 
jested, and visited with the ease and air of a man 
happy and full of hope. 

The walls of the Poet's onstead began now to be 
visible from the north side of the Nith, and the 
rising structures were visited by all who were de- 
sirous of seeing how he wished to house himself. 
The plans were simple : the barn seemed too small 
for the extent of the farm, and the house for the 
accomodation of a large family. It contained an 
ample kitchen, which was to serve for dining-room ; 
a room to hold two beds, a closet to hold one, and a 
garret, coom-ceiled, to contain others for the female 
servants. One of the windows looked down the 
holms, another opened on the river, and the house 
stood so nigh the lofty bank that its afternoon 
shadow fell across the stream upon the opposite 
fields. The garden was a little way from the house ; 
a pretty footpath led southward along the river side ; 
another ran northward, affording fine views of the 
Nith, and of the groves of Friars- Carse and Dais- 
winton ; while, half way down the steep declivity, a 
fine, clear, cool, spring supplied water to the house- 
hold. The situation was picturesque, and at the same 
time convenient for the purposes of the farm. 

During the progress of the work, Burns was often 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT EURNS. 211 

to be found walking among the men, urging them 
on, and eyeing with an anxious look the tedious 
process of uniting lime and stone. On laying the 
foundation he took off his hat, and asked a blessing 
on the home which was to shelter his household 
gods. I inquired of the man who told me this, if 
Burns did not put forth his hand and help him in 
the progress of the work ? — " Ay, that he did mony 
a time. If he saw us like to be beat wi' a big stane 
he would cry, ' bide a wee !' and come rinning. We 
soon found out when he put to his hand — he beat 
a' I ever met for a dour lift." When the walls rose 
as high as the window-heads, he sent a note into 
Dumfries ordering wood for the interior lintels. 
Twenty carpenters flocked round the messenger, all 
eager to look at the Poet's hand-writing. In such 
touches the admiration of the country is well ex- 
pressed. 

These days have been numbered by Currie among 
the golden days of Burns. Few of his days were 
golden, and most of them were full of trouble ; but 
his period of truest happiness seems to have been 
that which preceded and followed the first Edinburgh 
edition of his poems. Those were, it is true, days 
of feverish enjoyment ; but the tide of his fortune, 
or at least of his hopes, was at the full. The way 
before him was all sunshine ; and as his ambition 
was equal to his genius, he indulged in splendid 
visions of fame and glory. The neglect of the Scot- 
tish nobles rebuked his spirit ; he came to Dum- 
fries-shire a saddened and dissatisfied man : he saw 
that his bread must be gained by the sweat of his 
brow ; that the original curse, from which men with- 
p 2 



212 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

out a moiety of his intellect were relieved, had fallen 
heavy upon him ; and that he must plod labour's 
dull weary round, like an ox in a threshing-mill. 
The happiness present to his fancy now was less 
bright and ethereal than before ; he had to hope for 
heavy crops, rising markets, and fortunate bargains. 
At a harvest-home or penny-wedding he might 
expect to have his health drank, and hear one of his 
songs sung ; but this was not enough to satisfy am- 
bition such as his. Among the rising walls of his 
onstead, he 

" Cheeped like some bewildered chicken, 
Scared frae its minnie and the cleckin 
By hoodie craw.'' 

and complained to Mrs. Dunlop of the uncouth 
cares and novel plans which hourly insulted his 
awkward ignorance. These uncouth cares were the 
labours of a farm, and the novel plans were the 
intricate and laborious elegancies of a plain on- 
stead ! 

I have heard my father allege that Burns looked 
like a man restless and of unsettled purpose. — He 
was ever on the move," said he, " on foot or on 
horseback. In the course of a single day he might 
be seen holding the plough, angling in the river, 
sauntering with his hands behind his back on the 
banks looking at the running water, of which he 
was very fond, walking round his buildings, or over 
his fields ; and if you lost sight of him for an hour, 
perhaps you might see him returning from Friars- 
Carse, or spurring his horse through the Nith to 
spend an evening in some distant place with such 
friends as chance threw in his way." The account 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 213 

which he gives of himself is much to the same pur- 
pose. — " There is," said he, " a foggy atmosphere 
native to my soul in the hour of care, which makes 
the dreary objects seem larger than life. Extreme 
sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy 
side by a series of misfortunes and disappointments 
at that period of my existence when the soul is laying 
in her cargo of ideas for the voyage of life, is, I 
believe, the principal cause of this unhappy frame 
of mind." 

He loved to complain :■ — " My increasing cares," 
he says, " in this as yet strange country — gloomy 
conjectures in the dark vista of futurity — conscious- 
ness of my own inability for the struggle of the world 
— my broadened mark to misfortune in a wife and 
children — I could indulge these reflections till my 
humour should ferment into the most acid chagrin 
that would corrode the very thread of life." These 
are the sentiments of one resolved not to be com- 
forted, — " The heart of the man and the fancy of the 
poet, are the two grand considerations/' he observed, 
" for which I live. If miry ridges and dirty dung- 
hills are to engross the best part of the functions of 
my immortal soul, I had better been a rook or a 
magpie at once, and then I should not have been 
plagued with any ideas superior to breaking of clods, 
and picking up grubs, not to mention barn-door 
cocks or mallards — creatures with which I could 
almost exchange lives at any time." To Margaret 
Chalmers he writes in a mood a shade or so brighter; 
— " When I think I have met with you, and have 
lived more of real life with you in eight days than I 
can do with almost any body I meet with in eight 



214 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

years ; when I think on the improbability of meet- 
ing you in this world again — I could sit down and cry 
like a child." After this, we are scarcely prepared 
for his saying, " you will be pleased to hear that I 
have laid aside idle eclat, and bind every day after 
my reapers." 

Between the farm of Ellisland and the village of 
Mauchline lies a dreary road, forty-six miles long ; 
and along this not very romantic path Burns was in 
the habit of riding more frequently than was for the 
advantage of his pocket or his farm. It is true that 
it was Mrs. Burns who made him look to the west, 
and it is also true that a man should love and honour 
his wife ; but it seems not to have occurred to the 
Poet that strict economy and a vigilant look-out 
upon his farming operations was the most substan- 
tial way of paying respect to her. His jaunts were 
frequent ; he tarried long, and there were pleasant 
lingerings by the way — brought about by inclination 
sometimes, and sometimes by wind and rain. All 
this was much to be regretted, and it arose mainly 
from want of a residence for Mrs. Burns and his 
children near the farm which he superintended. He 
complains to Ainslie of want of time. He was not 
one of those who could sit quietly and let matters 
take their course : he had all the impatience of 
genius, and not a little of its irritability. 

In one of his excursions to Ayrshire, he found the 
inn at which he usually got a night's lodging filled 
with mourners conveying the body of a lady of some 
note in the west to her family tomb ; he was obliged 
to ride ten miles to another inn. The fruit of his 
vexation was an ode lavish of insult : — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 215 

M Dweller in yon dungeon dark, 
Hangman of creation, mark 
Who in widowed weeds appears, 
Laden with unhonoured years. 
Note that eye — 'tis rheum o'erflows— 
Pity's flood there never rose: 
See those hands, ne'er stretched to save ; 
Hands that took, but never gave." 

In these words, and others "bitterer still, the Poet 
avenged himself on the memory of a frugal and re- 
spectable lady, whose body unconsciously deprived 
him of a night's sleep. 

Some will like better, some worse, the reproof 
which he gave to Kirkpatrick, the minister of D un- 
score, for preaching down " the bloody and tyran- 
nical house of Stuart." The Poet went to the parish 
church to join in acknowledgments for the Revolu- 
tion to which we are indebted for civil and religious 
rights. The stern and uncompromising divine 
touched the yet lingering jacobitical prejudices of 
Burns so sharply, that he seemed ready to start 
from his seat and leave the church. 

On going home he wrote thus to the London Star : 
— " Bred and educated in revolution principles — 
the principles of reason and common sense — it could 
not be any silly prejudice which made my heart 
revolt at the abusive manner in which the reverend 
gentleman threatened the house of Stuart. We 
may rejoice sufficiently in our deliverance from past 
evils without cruelly raking up the ashes of those 
whose misfortune it was, perhaps, as much as their 
crime, to be the author of those evils. The Stu- 
arts only contended for prerogatives which they 
knew their predecessors enjoyed, and which they 
saw their contemporaries enjoying ; but these pre- 



216 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

rogatives were inimical to the happiness of a nation, 
and the rights of subjects. Whether it was owing 
to the wisdom of leading individuals, or to the jost- 
ling of parties, I cannot pretend to determine : but, 
happily for us, the kingly power was shifted into 
another branch of the family, who, as they owed the 
throne solely to the call of a free people, could claim 
nothing inconsistent with the covenanted terms 
which placed them there. Let every man who has 
a tear for the many miseries incident to humanity, 
feel for a family illustrious as any in Europe, and 
unfortunate beyond historic precedent ; and let every 
Briton, and particularly every Scotchman, who ever 
looked with reverential pity on the dotage of a 
parent, cast a veil over the fatal mistakes of the 
kings of his forefathers." 

The eloquent humanity of this appeal was thrown 
away, perhaps, upon an intrepid Calvinist, to whom 
the good things of this world were as dust in the 
balance, compared to what he deemed his duty to 
God and his conscience. — " You must have heard," 
says Burns in a letter to Nicol, " how Lawson of 
Kirkmahoe, seconded by Kirkpatrick of Dunscore, 
and the rest of that faction, have accused, in formal 
process, the unfortunate Heron of Kirkgunzeon, that 
in ordaining Neilson to the cure of souls in Kirk- 
bean, he feloniously and treasonably bound him to 
the Confession of Faith, as far as it was agreeable to 
reason and the word of God." The Poet was unfor- 
tunate in his respect for those Galloway apostles : 
for worth and true nobleness of mind, Lawson and 
Kirkpatrick were as high above them as CrifFel is 
above Solway. He was wayward and scarcely to be 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 217 

trusted in his arguments on religious topics : — a 
Cameronian boasted to me how effectually Burns in- 
terposed between him and two members of the estab- 
lished kirk, who were crushing him with a charge 
of heresy. — " The Poet/ 7 said he, " proved the 
established kirk to be schismatic, and the poor 
broken remnant to be the true light. Never believe 
me if he wasna a gude man !" 

A secluded walk, or a solitary ride, were to Burns 
what the lonely room and the evening lamp are said 
to be to others who woo the muse. Though sharp 
and sarcastic in his correspondence, he was kindly 
and obliging in other matters. He had formed a 
friendship with the family of Friars- Carse, and was 
indulged with a key which admitted him when he 
pleased to the beautiful grounds — to the rare col- 
lections of antique crosses, troughs, altars, and other 
inscribed stones of Scotland's elder day — and to 
what the Poet did not love less, a beautiful Hermit- 
age, in the centre of the grove next to Ellisland. 
He rewarded this indulgence by writing an inscrip- 
tion. At first the poem was all contained on one pane 
of glass ; but his fancy overflowed such limits : — 

" Thou whom chance may hither lead: 
Be thou clad in russet weed, 
Be thou deck'd in silken stole, 
Grave these maxims on thy soul : — 
Life is but a day at most, 
Sprung from night, in darkness lost ; 
Hope not sunshine every hour ; 
Fear not clouds will always louer. 
Stranger, go ! Heaven be thy guide ! 
Quod the Beadsman of Nithside." 

These sentiments shew the colour of the Poet's 
mind rather than its original vigour. He was hap- 
pier in a poem addressed to Graham of Fintry ; it 



218 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

is rich in observation, and abounds with vivid pic- 
tures, some of them darkening into the stern and 
the sarcastic : — 

" Thee, Nature ! partial Nature ! I arraign ; 
Of thy caprice maternal I complain. 
Thou giv'st the ass his hide, the snail his shell, 
Th' envenomed wasp victorious guards his cell ; 
Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug, 
The priest and hedge-hog in their robes are snug. 
But, oh ! thou bitter step-mother, and hard 
To thy poor fenceless naked child— the Bard ! 
A thing unteachable in worldly skill, 
And half an idiot too — more helpless still ; 
No nerves olfactory, Mammon's trusty cur, 
Clad in rich Dulness' comfortable fur, 
In naked feeling, and in aching pride, 
He bears the unbroken blast on every side; 
Vampyre booksellers drain him to the heart, 
And scorpion critics cureless venom dart. 
Critics !— appall'd I venture on the name ; 
Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame, 
Bloody dissectors, worse than ten Munro's ; 
He hacks to teach— they mangle to expose." 

The fine satire and graceful application of these 
lines make us regret that they were addressed to 
one who had nothing better in his gift than situa- 
tions in the Excise. 

In lyrical verse the muse of Burns was at this 
time somewhat sparing of her inspiration ; she who 
loved to sing of rustic happiness in her own country 
tongue, was put out in her musings by the sound of 
mason's hammers and carpenters' saws. The first 
of his attempts is the exquisite song called " The 
Chevalier's Lament ;" it was partly composed on 
horseback, March 30, 1788. — " Yesterday," he says 
to Robert Cleghorn, " as I was riding through a 
track of melancholy, joyless moors, between Gal- 
loway and Ayrshire, it being Sunday I turned my 
thoughts to psalms and hymns and spiritual songs ; 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 219 

and your favourite air, * Captain O'Keane,' coming 
at length in my head, I tried these words to it : — 

*' The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning, 

The murmuring streamlet winds clear through the vale, 
The hawthorn-tree blows in the dew of the morning, 
And wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale ; 
But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair, 
While the lingering moments are numbered by care ? 
No flowers gaily springing, nor birds sweetly singing, 
Can soothe the sad bosom of joyless despair." 

He contributed some dozen songs or so this 
season to Johnson : — " I can easily see that you 
will very probably," he says, " have four vo- 
lumes. Perhaps you may not find your account 
lucratively in this business ; but you are a patriot 
for the music of your country, and I am certain pos- 
terity will look upon themselves as highly indebted 
to your public spirit. I see every day new musical 
publications advertised, but what are they ? — gaudy 
butterflies of a day ; but your work will outlive the 
momentary neglects of idle fashion, and defy the 
teeth of time." Of the new songs which he wrote, 
" Beware of bonnie Ann " was the first ; Ann, the 
daughter of Allan Masterton was the heroine. — 
11 The Gardener wi' his Paidle " is another ; the 
first verse is natural and flowing : — 

•« When rosy May comes in wi' flowers, 
To deck the gay green spreading bowers* 
Then busy, busy are his hours, 

The gardener wi' his paidle. 
The chrystal waters gently fa', 
The merry birds are lovers a', 
The scented breezes round him blaw, 

The gardener wi' his paidle." 

" On a Bank of Flowers/' was written by desire of 
Johnson to replace a song of greater merit, but 
less delicacy, published by Ramsay. " The day 



220 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

returns, my bosom burns," was composed in com- 
pliment to the bridal-day of the laird of Friars- 
Carse and his lady ; it is very beautiful : — 

" The day returns, my bosom burns, 
The blissful day we twa did meet ; 
Though winter wild in tempest toil'd, 
Ne'er simmer sun was half sae sweet." 

" At their fire-side," says the Poet, " I have en- 
joyed more pleasant evenings than at all the houses 
of fashionable people in this country put together. 
" Go fetch to me a pint o* wine," Burns introduced 
to his brother Gilbert as an old song which he had 
found among the glens of Nithsdale, and asked if he 
did not think it beautiful. — " Beautiful V said Gil- 
bert ; " it is not only that, but the most heroic of 
lyrics. Ah, Robert ! if you would write oftener 
that way, your fame would be surer." He also 
copied it out as a work of the olden muse, to Mrs. 
Dunlop ; the second verse is magnificent : — 

** The trumpets sound, the banners fly, 

The glittering spears are ranked ready ; 
The shouts o' war are heard afar, 

The battle closes thick and bloody: 
But it's not the roar o' sea or shore 

Wad make me longer wish to tarry, 
Nor shouts o' war that's heard afar — 

It's leaving thee, my bonny Mary." 

He was fond of passing off his own compositions 
as the labours of forgotten bards ; " Auld lang 
syne " he spoke of to Mrs. Dunlop as a song that 
had often thrilled through his soul : nor did he hesi- 
tate to recommend it to Thomson as a lyric of other 
days which had never been in print, nor even in ma- 
nuscript, till he took it down from an old woman's 
singing. Many a Scottish heart will respond in far 
lands to the following lines : — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 221 

■« We twa hae run about the braes, 

An' pou'd the gowans fine, 
But we've wandered mony a weary foot 

Since auld lang syne. 
We twa hae paidlet i' the burn 

Frae morning sun till dine, 
But seas between us braid hae roar'd 

Since auld lang syne," 

The desponding spirit of the Poet is visible in the 
song of " The lazy mist." — " I'll never wish to 
hear it sung again/' said a farmer to me once ; " it 
is enough to make one quit plough-hilts and harrow, 
and turn hermit/' " Of a' the airts the wind can 
blaw" is as cheerful as the other is sorrowful. — " I 
composed it," said the Poet, " out of compliment to 
Mrs. Burns : — it was,' he archly adds, "during the 
honey-moon." This was the fruit of one of his horse- 
back meditations, when riding to Mossgiel from Ellis- 
land, with his rising onstead, his new-sown crop, 
and the charms of Jean Armour's company in his 
mind. He made it by the way, and sung it to his wife 
when he arrived. There are four verses altogether ; 
two of them are not commonly printed, though both 
are beautiful : — 

" O blaw ye wastlin' winds, blaw saft 

Amang the leafy trees, 
Wi' balmy gale frae hill an' dale, 

Bring hame the laden bees; 
And bring the lassie back to me 

That's aye sae neat an' clean ; 
Ae smile o' her wou'd banish care, 

Sae charming is my Jean." 

These verses with which Burns eked out and 
amended the old lyrics are worthy of notice. There 
is some happy patching in " Tibbie Dunbar : — 

" I care na thy daddie, his lands and his money; 
I care na thy kindred sae high and sae lordly ; 
But say thou wilt hae me for better for waur 
And come in thy coatie, sweet Tibbie Dunbar." 

In " The Tailor fell thro' the bed, thimbles an' a' ;" 



222 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

and in " Ay waukin, O," are two or three of the 
Burns' touches. " In " My Love she's but a lassie 
yet," his hand is more visible : — 

" My love she's but a lassie yet, 
My love she's but a lassie yet ; 
We'll let her stand a year or twa. 
She'll no be half sae saucy yet : 
I rue the day I sought her O, 
I rue the day I sought her, O ; 
Wha gets her need na say he's wooed, 
But he may say he's bought her, O." 

Having cut and secured his crop, seen his stable 
for holding four horses, his byre for containing ten 
cows erected, and his dwelling-house rendered nearly 
habitable, he went into Ayrshire in the middle of 
November, and, in the first week of the succeeding 
month, returned with Mrs. Burns, and some cart- 
loads, of plenishing to Ellisland. He was visited on 
this occasion by many of his neighbours : the glad- 
some looks and the kindly manners of his young 
wife made a favourable impression on all ; and at 
his house-heating, " Luck to the roof- tree of the 
house of Burns !" was drank by the men, and some 
of his songs sung by the lasses of Nithsdale. He 
was looked upon now as having struck root as a poet 
and a farmer, and as both was welcome to the people 
of the vale around. Yet his coming brought some- 
thing like alarm to a few : the ruder part of the pea- 
santry dreaded being pickled and preserved in sar- 
castic verse. An old farmer told me, that at a 
penny-pay wedding, when one or two wild young 
fellows began to quarrel and threatened to fight, 
Burns rose up and said, " Sit down and be 
damned to you ! else I'll hing ye up like potatoe- 
bogles, in sang to-morrow." — " They ceased and sat 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 223 

down/' said my informant, " as if their noses had 
been bleeding." 

In the letters and verses of the Poet at this period, 
we can see a picture of his mind and feelings. — " I 
own myself," said he, -in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 
" so little of a presbyterian, that I approve of set 
times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of 
devotion, This day (January 1, 1789), the first 
Sunday in May ; a breezy, blue-skyed noon, some- 
time about the beginning, and a hoary morning 
and calm sunny day about the end of autumn ; 
these, time out of mind, have been to me a kind 
of holiday. We know nothing, or next to no- 
thing, of the substance or structure of our souls ; 
so cannot account, for those seeming caprices in 
them, that one should be particularly pleased with 
this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a 
different cast make no extraordinary impression. I 
have some favourite flowers in spring, among which 
are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, 
the wild-brier-rose, the budding birch, and the hoary 
hawthorn, that I view and hang ovsr with particular 
delight. I never heard the loud solitary whistle of 
the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing 
cadence of a troop of grey plovers in an autumnal 
morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like 
the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Do these 
workings argue something within us above the trod- 
den clod ? I own myself partial to such proofs of 
those awful and important realities — a God that 
made all things — man's immaterial and immortal 
nature, and a world of weal or woe beyond death and 
the grave." Thus eloquently could Burns discourse 



224 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

upon his own emotions ; he was willing to accept, 
as proofs of an immortal spirit within him, the poetic 
stirrings of, his own sensibility. 

That Burns imagined he had united the poet, 
farmer, and exciseman, all happily in his own per- 
son, was a dream in which he indulged only during 
the first season that he occupied Ellisland. When 
he thought of his bargain with Miller, his natural 
engagement with the muse, and of his increasing 
family, he was not unconscious that he had taxed 
mind and body to the uttermost : poetry was not 
then, more than now, a productive commodity, and 
he could not expect a harvest such as he had reaped 
in Edinburgh every year. A farm such as his, re- 
quired the closest, nay, most niggardly, economy to 
make it pay ; and he was not, therefore, unwise in 
leaning to the Excise to help out with a little ready 
and certain money the deficiencies of his other specu- 
lations. As yet, however, his hopes were high, and 
his spirit untouched — when he said 

' Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van, 
Thou stalk o' carle-hemp in man:" 

he was bracing himself up for the contest. Such 
fits of thought generally with him ushered in verse. 
When visions of fame and honest hard-earned inde- 
pendence passed before his sight, Burns slipt out to 
the " Scaur's red side," and pacing to and fro, indi- 
cated by the humming of some favourite tune, that 
he was busy with song. Nay, it was not unusual 
with him to go out, " attired as minstrels wont to 
be," with his head uncovered — his ancestor's broad 
sword buckled to his side ; and, traversing the river- 
bank in the glimpses of the moon, chaunt in a voice, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 225 

deep, low, and melodious, the verses which rose on 
his fancy. Xith side was a favourite place for study : 
southward lies a pretty walk among natural clover : 
northward the bank is rough with briar and birch, 
while far below, the stream roughened by the large 
stones of Fluechar-Ford, may be heard — 

" Chafing against the Scaur's red side." 

Here, after a fall of rain, the poet loved to walk 
" listening to the dashing roar," or looking at the 
river, chafed and agitated, bursting impetuously from 
the groves of Friar's- Carse against the bridling em- 
bankment which fences the low holms of Dais win ton. 
Thither he walked in his sterner moods, when the 
world and its ways touched his spirit ; and the elder 
peasants of the vale still shew the point at which he 
used to pause and look on the red and agitated 
stream. In one of these moods he produced " I 
hae a wife of my am," a rather indecorous ditty, but 
full of the character of the man, and breathing of 
resolution and independence : — 

< ' I hae a penny to spend, 

There — thanks to naebody ; 
I hae naething to lend, 
I'll borrow from naebody. 

'< I am naebody's lord, 

I'll be slave to naebody ; 
I hae a gude braid sword— 
I'll tak dunts frae naebody.*' 

Burns indulged in the wish to compose a work, 
less desultory, and more the offspring of meditation 
than those short and casual pieces which were rather 
the sport of his vacant hours than the result of set- 
tled study and deliberate thought. Something like 
the Georgics of Virgil, a kind of composition for 
which he was well fitted, both by genius and know- 

VOL. I, Q 



r 226 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ledge, seems to have hovered before his fancy.— 
" It is a species of writing," he observed, " entirely- 
new to me, and has filled my head with a thousand 
fancies of emulation ; but, alas ! when I read the 
Georgics, and then survey my own powers, 'tis 
like the idea of a Shetland pony drawn up by the 
side of a thorough -bred hunter to start for the plate." 
These words were addressed to Mrs. Dunlop ; he 
afterwards says to Dr. Moore : — " The character 
and employment of a poet were formerly my plea- 
sure, but are now my pride. I have no doubt but 
the knack, the aptitude, to learn the Muses' trade, 
is a gift bestowed by Him who forms the secret bias 
of the soul ; but I as firmly believe that excellence 
in the profession is the fruit of industry, attention, 
labour, and pains ; at least, I am resolved to try my 
doctrine by the test of experience. Another ap- 
pearance from the press I put off to a very distant 
day — a day that may never arrive ; but poesy I am 
determined to prosecute with all my vigour." The 
critics of those days seem not to have felt that he 
had already taken a flight above any bard of his 
time ; they regarded the " Address to the Deil," 
" The Daisy," " The Mouse," and " The Cotter's 
Saturday Night" as " Orient pearls at random 
strung ;" and held that their worth had yet to be 
decided by future works of more sustained excel- 
lence. This seems to have perplexed Burns ; such 
opinions pointed to a school of verse in which he 
had never studied. 

The Poet did not flourish ; yet he seems to have 
done enough to ensure success as a farmer. He 
held the plough frequently with his own hands ; and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 



22: 



he loved to lay aside his coat, and with a sowing- 
sheet slung across his shoulder, stride over the new- 
turned furrows, and commit his seed-corn to the 
ground. — While his wife managed the cheese and 
butter department with something short of West 
country skill, he attended fairs where grain was sold, 
and sales where cattle were disposed of; and, though 
not averse to a merry-making or a dance, he seems 
neither to have courted nor shunned them. — " Do 
you come and see me," he says to Richard Brown, 
" We must have a social day, and perhaps lengthen 
it out with half the night before you go again to 
sea. You are the earliest friend I now have on 
earth, my brothers excepted ; and is not that an 
endearing circumstance ? When you and I first 
met, we were at a green period of human life. The 
twig could easily take a bent, but would as easily 
return to its former state. You and I not only 
took a mutual bent, but, by the melancholy though 
strong influence of being both of the family of the 
unfortunates, we were intertwined with one another 
in our growth towards advanced age ; and blasted 
be the sacrilegious hand that shall attempt to 
undo the union !" He loved old friendships to con- 
tinue, and rejoiced in the happiness of his early 
companions. 

The diffusion of knowledge was a favourite object 
with Burns ; for this he had established his reading 
and debating-clubs in the west, and in the same 
spirit he now desired to excite a love of literature 
among the portioners and peasants of Dunscore. 
He undertook the management of a small parochial 
library, and wrote out the rules. His friend, Gordon, 
Q2 



228 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

a writer, happened to drop in while he was busy 
with the regulations, and began to criticise the lan- 
guage — a matter on which the bard was sensitive. — 
" Come, come, sir," said he, " let me have my rules 
again. Had I employed a Dumfries lawyer to draw 
them out, he would have given me bad Latin, worse 
Greek, and English spoken in the fourteenth cen- 
tury." Mr. Riddell, of Friars-Carse, and other 
gentlemen, contributed money and books. The 
library commenced briskly, but soon languished. 
The Poet could not always be present at the meet- 
ings ; the subscribers lived far separate ; disputes 
and disunion crept in, and it died away like a 
flower which fades for want of watering. Burns 
alludes ironically to the scheme in one of his letters, 
Wisdom, he averred, might be gained by the mere 
handling of books. One night, he said, while he 
presided in the library, a tailor, who lived some mile 
or so distant, turned over and over the leaves of a 
folio Hebrew concordance, the gift of a clergyman. — 
" I advised him," said Burns, " to bind the book 
on his back — he did so ; and Stitch, in a dozen 
walks between the library and his own house, ac- 
quired as much rational theology as the priest had 
done by forty years' perusal of the pages." Such 
ironical sallies were not likely to allure subscribers 
or give knowledge to the ignorant. 

Some have hinted that his appointment in the 
Excise was unfortunate, as it led to the temptations 
of pleasant company and social excess. There is no 
situation under the sun free from this ; even a 
farmer is as much exposed to such allurements as 
any one. The Poet, a good judge in all such mat- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 229 

ters, looked with a different eye upon it ; nor is 
there any thing too romantic in the wish that journey- 
ing along the green vales and among the fine hills of 
Nithsdale and Galloway might inspire his muse, and 
aid him in poetic composition. " I do not know," 
he said to Ainslie, "if I have informed you that I 
am now appointed to an Excise division, in the 
middle of which my house and farm lie. I know 
not how the word exciseman, or still more oppro- 
brious gauger, will sound in your ears. I, too, 
have seen the day when my auditory nerves would 
have felt very delicately on the subject ; but a wife 
and children have a wonderful power in blunting 
these kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a-year for 
life, and a provision for widows and orphans, you 
will allow, is no bad settlement for a poet. For the 
ignominy of the profession, I have the encourage- 
ment which I once heard a recruiting-serjeant give 
to a numerous, if not a respectable, audience in the 
streets of Kilmarnock : — ' Gentlemen, for your far- 
ther and better encouragement, I can assure you 
that our regiment is the most blackguard corps 
under the crown ; and, consequently, with us, an 
honest man has the surest chance for preferment.' " 
In the same strain he writes to his friend Black- 
lock : — 

«« But what d'ye think, my trusty fere, 
I'm turn'd a gauger.— Peace be here ! 
Parnassian queans, I fear, I fear, 

Ye' 11 now disdain me, 
A.nd then my fifty pounds a-year 
Will little gain me. 
" Yeglaiket, gleesome, dainty damies, 
Wha by Castalia's wimplin' streamies 
Lowp, sing, and lave your pretty limbies, 

Ye ken, ye ken, 
That Strang necessity supreme is 
'Maug sons o' men. 



230 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

*• I hae a wife and twa wee laddies, 

They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies : 
Ye ken yoursel my heart quite proud is — 

I need na vaunt ; 
But I'll sned besoms' thrawsaugh woodies, 
Before they want." 

In these verses we read of the man as well as the 
poet ; he put more of himself into all he wrote than 
any other poet, ancient or modern. 

" His farm," says Currie, " no longer occupied 
the principal part of his care or his thoughts. It 
was not at Ellisland that he was now in general to he 
found. Mounted on horseback, this high-minded 
Poet was pursuing the defaulters of the revenue 
among the hills and vales of Nithsdale, his roving 
eye wandering over the charms of nature, and mut- 
tering his wayward fancies as he moved along." 
Currie means something like censure in this pas- 
sage. The Poet had a duty, and an arduous one, to 
perform ; his district reached far and wide ; he was 
ever punctual in his attendance ; and, though he 
might plough and sow, reap and graze Ellisland by 
deputy, it required his own eyes and hands to super- 
intend the revenue in ten parishes. That he acquitted 
himself diligently, but gently, in his vocation, there is 
abundance of proof ; against the regular smugglers 
his looks were stern and his hand was heavy, while 
to the poor country dealer he was mild and lenient. 
The Poet and a brother exciseman one day suddenly 
entered a widow woman's shopinDunscore, and made 
a seizure of smuggled tobacco. — " Jenny," said the 
Poet, " I expected this would be the upshot ; here, 
Lewars, take note of the number of rolls as I count 
them. Now Jock, did ye ever hear an auld wife 
numbering her threads before check -reels were in- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 231 

vented ? Thou's ane, and thou's no ane, and thou's 
ane a' out — listen." As he handed out the rolls, he 
went on with his humorous enumeration, but drop- 
ping every other roll into Janet's lap. Lewars took 
the desired note with much gravity, and saw as if he 
saw not the merciful conduct of his companion. 
Another information had been lodged against a widow 
who kept a small public-house in Thornhill ; it was 
a fair-day — her house was crowded — Burns came 
suddenly to the back door and said, " Kate, are ye 
mad ?— -the supervisor will be in on ye in half an 
hour!" This merciful hint — out of which a very 
serious charge against the Poet might have been 
made — saved the poor woman from ruin. 

The muse, as he expected, accompanied Burns in 
his gauging excursions. He had occasion to be at 
Lochmaben ; Maxwell, then provost of that very 
small but very ancient borough, was his correspon- 
dent : — he was also acquainted with that " worthy 
veteran in religion and good fellowship, the Reverend 
Mr. Jeffrey." At the manse of the latter he met 
" the blue-eyed lass " in his daughter Jean, then a 
rosy girl of seventeen, with winning manners and 
laughing blue eyes. The Poet drank tea and spent 
the evening in the manse ; and next morning, greatly 
to the increase of her blushes, sent her the song 
which has made her immortal : — 

" I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, 

A gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue; 
I gat my death frae twa sweet e'en, 

Twa laughing e'en o' bonny blue : 
She talk'd, she smil'd, my heart she wil'd, 

She charm'd my soul, I wistna how ; 
But ay the stound, the deadly wound, 

Came frae her e'en sae bonny blue." 



232 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

In April, he wrote the poem of " The wounded 
hare :" he has himself described the circumstances 
under which he composed it ; his account was con- 
firmed to me by James Thomson, the son of a neigh- 
bouring farmer. — " I remember Burns," said he, 
" weel ; I have some cause to mind him — he used 
to walk in the twilight along the side of the Nith, 
near the march, between his land and ours. Once I 
shot at a hare that was busy on our braird ; she ran 
bleeding past Burns : he cursed me and ordered me 
out of his sight, else he would throw me into the 
water. I'm told he has written a poem about it." — 
" Aye, that he has," I replied ; " but do you think 
he could have thrown you into the Nith ?" — 
" Thrown ! aye, I'll warrant could he, though I was 
baith young and strong." He submitted the poem — 
certainly not one of his best — to Dr. Gregory ; the 
result scared him from consulting in future profes- 
sional critics. — " I believe," he said, " in the iron 
justice of Dr. Gregory ; but I believe and tremble." 
Such criticisms tend to crush the spirit out of man. 
— " The Kirk's Alarm," a poem personal and satiric, 
with gleams of wit and poetry worthy of a subject 
less local was the offspring of this season. It was 
composed at the request of some of his Ayrshire 
friends, to aid the Rev. Dr. Macgill, against whom 
the Kirk was directing its thunder for having written 
a heretical book. The reverend delinquent yielded, 
and was forgiven — not so the poet : so much more 
venial is it in devout mens* eyes to be guilty of 
heresy than of satire. 

The applause which his next attempt obtained, 
afforded some consolation for such merciless stric- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 233 

tures ; this was the song, " O ! were I on Parnassus' 
hill ;" the heroine was Mrs. Burns ; the transition 
from the " forked hill" and " fabled fount" of the 
heathen to a nearer stream and Scottish mount of 
inspiration, has been much admired. 

" O ! were I on Parnassus hill, 
Or had o' Helicon my fill, 
That I might catch poetic skill, 
To sing how dear I love thee ; 
But Nith maun be my muse's well, 
My muse maun be thy bonnie sel', 
On Corsincon I'll glow'r and spell, 
And write how dear I love thee." 

He presented the song to Miss Staig, an accom- 
plished young lady of Dumfries, saying, " should 
the respectful timidity of any one of her lovers deny 
him power of speech, it would be charitable to teach 
him, ' O ! were I on Parnassus' hill,' so that he might 
not lie under the double imputation of being neither 
able ' to sing nor say.' " 

The thoughts of Burns had travelled far from 
Corsincon and the waters of the Nith, when he wrote 
" My heart's in the Highlands/' The words suit a 
Gaelic air, and have much of the northern spirit in 
them : — 

" My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here ; 
My heart's in the Highlands a chasing the deer, 
A chasing the wild deer and following the roe ; 
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go !" 

Nor were his thoughts at his own fire-side when he 
penned his humorous and sarcastic ditty, " Whistle 
owre the lave o't." Wedded infelicity is the theme 
of many of our old minstrels : — 

" Meg was meek and Meg was mild, 
Sweet and harmless as a child — 
Wiser men than me's beguiled ; 
Whistle owre the lave o't." 



234 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

His fancy was now and then fond of " stepping 
westward;" this is sufficiently indicated in his 
" Braes o' Ballochmyle," and with deeper feelings 
still in his " To Mary in Heaven," written near the 
close of September, 1789. The circumstances under 
which the latter lyric was composed pressed pain- 
fully on the mind of his wife. — " Robert," she said, 
" though ill of a cold, had busied himself all day 
with the shearers in the field, and, as he had got 
much of the crop in, was in capital spirits. But 
when the gloaming came, he grew sad about some- 
thing — he could not rest. He wandered first up 
the water-side, and then went to the barn-yard ; and 
I followed him, begging him to come in, as he was 
ill, and the air was cold and sharp. He always pro- 
mised, but still remained where he was, striding up 
and down, and looking at the clear sky, and par- 
ticularly at a star that shone like another moon. He 
then threw himself down on some loose sheaves, still 
continuing to gaze at the star." When he came in 
he seemed deeply dejected, and sat down and wrote 
the first verse : — 

" Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, 

That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
Again thou usherest in the day 

My Mary from my soul was torn. 
O Mary ! dear departed shade ! 

Where is thy place of blissful rest ? 
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid ? 

Hearest thou the groans that rend his breast ?" 

On this touching topic he writes to Mrs. Dun- 
lop : — " Can it be possible that, when I resign 
this frail feverish being, I shall still find myself 
in conscious existence ? When the last gasp of 
agony has announced that I am no more to those 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 235 

who knew me, and the few who loved me ; when 
the cold unconscious corse is resigned to the earth 
to be the prey of reptiles, and become a trodden 
clod, shall I be yet warm in life, seeing and seen — 
enjoying and enjoyed? If there is another life, it 
must be only for the just, the benevolent, the ami- 
able, and the humane. What a flattering idea, then, 
is a world to come ! There shall I, with speechless 
agony of rapture, again recognize my lost — my ever 
dear Mary ! whose bosom was fraught with truth, 
honour, constancy, and love." Few wives would 
interpret these melancholy allusions into happiness 
for themselves. Mrs. Burns seems to have con- 
ducted herself with much gentleness. 

These melancholy moods seldom lasted long — and 
they were generally relieved by verse. Poetry, 
therefore, had some share in them. Nor was it 
unnatural, when the world pressed and the cloud 
descended, for Burns to cheer the present by bright 
images of the past. Had fortune been more kind, 
he would have looked less at the Highland-Mary 
star, and indulged, probably, in strains of a more 
enlivening nature. In those days the Poet describes 
himself as the prey of nervous affections. — " I can-* 
not reason," he says, " I cannot think ; I would not 
venture to write any thing above an order to a cob- 
bler. You have felt too much of the ills of life not 
to sympathize with a diseased wretch, who is im- 
paired in more than half of any faculties he pos- 
sessed." 

Yet in the same season he wrote his joyous strain, 
" Willie brewed a peck o' maut." The history of 
the song involves that of the Poet. Nicol, by the 



236 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

advice of Burns, bought the farm of Laggan in his 
neighbourhood, and in the autumn vacation came to 
look after his purchase. Allan Masterton accom- 
panied him, and summoning the bard, they resolved 
to have a " house-heatino;." Kicol furnished the 
table, Burns produced the song, and Masterton set 
it to music. All these lyrics, and others of scarcely 
inferior merit, were printed in the third volume of 
the Musical Museum. The song called " The banks 
of the Nith " partakes of the sobriety of verses 
written to please a friend. In vain the Poet thinks 
of Thames flowing proudly to the sea, and of the 
Nith — 

" Where Comyns ance had high command." 

His muse will not be satisfied till he gives her license 
upon another strain — the song of " Tarn Glen." 
Thought flows free, and words " come skelpin' rank 
and file/' in this happy lyric. The heroine has set 
her heart on honest Tarn, and, in spite of the per- 
suasions and bribes of her relations, perseveres in 
her attachment. Besides his personal qualities, there 
are other reasons of weight : — 

" The last Halloween I was wauken, 
My drouket sark-sleeve, as ye ken ; 
His likeness came up the house stauken — 
The very grey breeks o' Tam Glen." 

Burns went to a school in which the master caused 
his scholars to sing this song. The Poet was hard to 
please in matters of sentiment, and said, " Children 
can't do such things, sir ; they sing, but it is with- 
out feeling," 

He had now made the acquaintance and acquired 
the friendship of some of the chief families in the 
vale of Nith ; the doors of Friars- Carse, Terraughty, 



THE LIFE OF ROEERT BURNS. 237 

Blackwood, Closeburn, Barjarg, Dalswinton, Glenae, 
Kirkconnel, and Arbigland were opened to receive 
and to welcome him ; nor were those of Drumlanrig 
shut. The Duke of Queensbury was represented 
by John M'Murdo, who had taste to appreciate the 
merits of such a man as Burns. In one of his letters 
to that gentleman, he says, in his usual characteristic 
way, — " A poet and a beggar are in so many points 
of view alike, that one might take them for the same 
individual character under different designations ; 
w r ere it not that though, with a trifling license, most 
poets may be styled beggars, yet the converse of 
the proposition does not hold that every beggar is a 
poet. In one particular, however, they remarkably 
agree : if you help either the one or the other to the 
picking of a bone or a mug of ale, they will very 
willingly repay you with verse. I feel myself in- 
debted to you, in the style of our ballad-printers, 
for ' five excellent new songs.' The enclosed is 
nearly my newest song, ' The Country Lass,' and 
one that has cost me some pains, though that is but 
an equivocal mark of excellence. You see, sir, what 
it is to patronize a poet ; 'tis like being a magistrate 
in a petty borough ; you do them the favour to preside 
at their council for one year, and your name bears 
the prefatory stigma of bailie for life. With the com- 
pliments, and the best wishes, I send the sincere 
prayers of the season for you, that you may see many 
nd happy years with Mrs. M'Murdo and your family 
— two blessings, by-the-bye, to which your rank does 
not by any means entitle you ; a loving wife and a 
fine family being almost the only good things of this 
life to which the farm-house has an exclusive right." 



238 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

In the midst of visits given and received — acts of 
kindness done by gentlemen, and words of applause, 
more welcome still, from ladies, Burns was thought- 
ful and unhappy. From the pursuit of " pension, 
post, or place," he had withdrawn with embittered 
feelings to a farm, and now he found that the plough 
and the sickle failed to give even the rustic abun- 
dance he had contemplated. On Ellisland he had 
expended all his money in the first year of occupa- 
tion ; — in the second year he writes, — " My mind 
is so jaded, and racked, and bedeviled with that task 
of the superlatively damned — making one guinea do 
the business of three, that T detest and abhor the 
very word business, though no less than four letters 
of my own short sirname are in it." He felt, too, 
that he had laid out his money in vain. He sus- 
pected his mistake early. It will be recollected that 
he said, in September 1788, " I do not find my 
farm the pennyworth I was taught to expect ; but I 
believe in time it may be a saving bargain." To 
Dr. Moore, in January, 1799, he says : " I have 
married my Jean, and taken a farm : with the first 
step, I have every day more and more reason to be 
satisfied; with the last, it is rather the reverse." 
Still he did not despair ; nay, he sometimes saw in 
imagination the poet-farmer high in the scale of 
opulence as well as fame. — " I am here in my old 
way," he writes to Mr. Macauley, " holding the 
plough, marking the growth of my corn, or the 
health of my dairy, and at times sauntering by the 
delightful windings of the Nith, on the margin of 
which I have built my humble domicile, praying for 
seasonable weather, or holding an intrigue with the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 239 

muses, the only gipsies with whom I have now any 
intercourse." 

The new-year's-day of 1790 wrought a change in 
his mind, or rather confirmed his worst suspicions : he 
had now brought two years' crop to the flail, and was 
thus enabled to weigh the certain past against future 
hope. We may gather the result from his words to 
Gilbert : — " I have not in my present frame of mind, 
much appetite for exertion in writing : my nerves 
are in a cursed state. I feel that horrid hypochon- 
dria pervading every atom of both body and soul. 
This farm has undone my enjoyment of myself; it 
is a ruinous affair on all hands. But let it go — I'll 
fight it out and be off with it." Though Ellisland 
promised before the fourth of the lease was done to 
be a saving bargain, there is no doubt that at first it 
was a losing one. The heart had been wrought out 
of the ground by preceding tenants, and the crops 
of grass or corn which it yielded to the Poet afforded 
but a bare return for labour and outlay. 

The condition of a farmer in Nithsdale was in 
those days sufficiently humble ; his one-story house 
had a clay floor ; his furniture was made by the 
hands of a plough wright ; he presided at meals among 
his children and domestics ; performed family wor- 
ship, " duly even and morn ;" and only put on the 
look of a man of substance when he gave a dinner 
to a douce neighbour. Out of doors all was rude 
and slovenly: his plough was the clumsy old Scotch 
one : his harrows had oftener teeth of wood than of 
iron ; his carts were heavy and low-wheeled — the 
axles were of wood ; he winnowed his corn by 
means of the wind, between two barn-doors ; and 



240 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

he refused to commit his seed to the earth till, seat- 
ing himself on the ground at mid-day, it gave warmth 
instead of receiving it. He was too poor to make 
experiments, and too prejudiced to speculate. He 
rooted up no bushes, dug up no stones ; neither did 
he drain or enclose ; the dung which he bestowed 
on the soil was to raise a crop of potatoes ; now and 
then it received a powdering of lime. His crops 
corresponded with his skill and his implements ; 
they were weak, and only enabled him to pay his 
rent and lay past a few pounds Scots, annually. 

Much of the ground in Nithsdale was leased at 
seven, ten, and some fields of more than ordinary 
richness, at fifteen shillings an acre. The farmer 
differed little in wealth and condition from the pea- 
sants around him. The war, which soon commenced, 
raised him in the scale of existence ; the army and 
navy consumed much of his produce ; for an hun- 
dred thousand soldiers in time of war, require as 
much provision as two hundred thousand in times of 
peace. With the demand, the price of corn aug- 
mented ; the farmer rose on the wings of sudden 
wealth above his original condition ; his house ob- 
tained a slated roof and sash windows ; carpets 
were laid on the floors, instruments of music were 
placed in the parlours ; he wore no longer a coat 
of home-made cloth ; he sat no longer at meals 
among his servants ; family devotion was relin- 
quished as a thing unfashionable, and he became a 
sort of rustic gentleman, who rode a blood-horse, 
and galloped home on market-nights at the peril of 
his own neck and to the terror of all humble pedes- 
trians. His sons were educated at college, and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 241 

went to the bar or got commissions in the army : 
his daughters changed their linsey-wolsey gowns for 
others of silk; carried their heads high, and blushed 
for their relations who were numbered among the 
wrights, masons, and shoemakers of the land. When 
a change like this took place among the farmers of the 
vale, the dews of wealth would have fallen at the same 
time on the tenant of Ellisland ; but Burns was too 
poor and too impatient to wait long for better times, 
he resolved to try another year or two, and then 
abandon farming for ever, if it refused to bring the 
wealth to him which it did to others. 

Having made this covenant with himself, he re- 
sumed his intercourse with the muse, and produced 
one of the best as well as longest of all his poems — 
" Tarn O'Shanter." For this noble tale we are in- 
debted to something like accident. Grose, the anti- 
quarian, was on a visit to Riddell of Friars- Carse, 
who, like himself, had a collection 

" Of auld nick-nackets, 
Rusty aim caps and jinglin' jackets 
Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets 
A towmont gude." 

The Poet was invited to add wings to the evening 
hours, and something like friendship was established 
between him and the social Englishman, which both 
imagined would be lasting. In conversing about the 
antiquities of Scotland, Burns begged that Grose 
would introduce Alio way kirk into his projected 
work ; and, to fix the subject on his mind, related 
some of the wild stories of devilry and witchcraft 
with which Scotland abounds. The antiquarian lis- 
tened to them all, and then said, " Write a poem on 
it, and I'll put in the verses with an engraving of 

VOL. I. R 



242 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the ruin." Burns set his muse to work ; he could 
hardly sleep for the spell that was upon him, and 
with his " barmy noddle working prime," walked 
out to his favourite path along the river-bank. 

" Tam O'Shanter" was the work of a single day ; 
the name was taken from the farm of Shanter in 
Carrick, the story from tradition. Mrs. Burns re- 
lates that, observing Robert walking with long 
swinging sort of strides and apparently muttering as 
he went, she let him alone for some time ; at length 
she took the children with her and went forth to 
meet him ; he seemed not to observe her, but con- 
tinued his walk ; " on this," said she, " I stept 
aside with the bairns among the broom — and past 
us he came, his brow flushed and his eyes shining ; 
he was reciting these lines : — 

' Now Tain ! O Tam ! had thae been queans, 
A' plump and strapping in their teens, 
Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen, 
Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen ! 
Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, 
That ance were plush, o' gude blue hair, 
I wad hae gi'en them affmy hurdies ! 
For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies !' 

I wish ye had but seen him ! he was in such ecstacy 
that the tears were happing down his cheeks." The 
Poet had taken writing materials with him, and 
leaning on a turf fence which commanded a view 
of the river, he committed the poem to paper, 
walked home, and read it in great triumph at the 
fire-side. It came complete and perfect from his 
fancy at the first heat ; — no other work in the lan- 
guage contains such wondrous variety of genius in 
the same number of lines. His own account of his 
rapture in composition confirms the description of 
Mrs. Burns : — " I seized," said he to a correspon- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 243 

dent, " my gilt-headed Wangee rod in my left hand 
— an instrument indispensably necessary — in the 
moment of inspiration and rapture, and stride, stride, 
quicker and quicker, — out skipt I among the broomy 
banks of the Nith to muse." 

Burns found his tale in several prose traditions. 
One stormy night, amid squalls of wind and blasts 
of hail — in short, on such a night as the devil would 
choose to take the air in, a farmer was plashing 
homewards from the forge with plough-irons on his 
shoulder. As he approached Alloway kirk, he was 
startled by a light glimmering in the haunted edi- 
fice ; he walked up to the door, and saw a cauldron 
suspended over a fire, in which the heads and limbs 
of unchristened children were beginning to simmer. 
As there was neither fiend nor witch to protect it, 
he unhooked the cauldron, poured out the contents, 
and carried his trophy home, where it long remained 
an evidence of the truth of his story. We may ob- 
serve in the poem the use made by Burns of this 
Kyle legend. Another story supplied him with two 
of his chief characters. A farmer having been de- 
tained by business in Ayr, found himself crossing 
the old Bridge of Doon about the middle of the 
night. When he reached the gate of Alloway kirk- 
yard, a light came streaming from a Gothic window 
in the gabel, and he saw with surprise a batch of 
witches dancing merrily round their master the 
devil, who was keeping them in motion by the sound 
of his bag-pipe. The farmer stopt his horse and 
gazed at their gambols ; he saw several old dames 
of his acquaintance among them : they were footing 
it in their smocks. Unfortunately for him, one of 
r2 



244 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

them wore a smock too short by a span or so, which 
so tickled the farmer that he burst out with " Weel 
luppan, Maggie wi' the short sark !" He recollected 
himself, turned his horse's head and spurred and 
switched with all his might towards the brig of Doon, 
well knowing that — 

" A running stream they darena cross." 

When he reached the middle of the arch, one of 
the hags sprang to sieze him, but nothing was on 
her side of the stream saving the horse's tail, which 
gave way to her grasp as if touched by lightning. 

In a Galloway version of the tradition, it is re- 
corded that the witch, seizing the horse by the tail, 
stopt it in full career in the centre of the bridge ; 
upon which the farmer struck a back-handed blow 
with his sword that set him free, and enabled him to 
pass the stream without further molestation. On 
reaching his own house he found, to his horror, a 
woman's hand hanging in his horse's tail ; and next 
morning was informed that the handsome wife of 
one of his neighbours was dangerously ill, and not 
expected to live. He went to see her — she turned 
away her face from him, and obstinately refused to 
say what ailed her ; upon which he forcibly bared 
her wounded arm, and displaying the bloody hand, 
accused her of witchcraft and dealings with the devil ; 
thereupon she made a confession, and was condemned 
and burnt. The Galloway legend was too tragic for 
the aim of the Poet ; it would have jarred with the 
wild humour of the scene in the kirk, and prevented 
him from displaying his wondrous powers of uniting 
the laughable with the serious, and the witty with 
the awful. Cromek, a curious inquirer, was inform- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 245 

ed on the spot that the places where the pack- 
man was smothered in the snow — where drunken 
Charlie broke his neck — where the murdered 
child was found by hunters — and where the mother 
of poor Mungo hanged herself, were no imaginary 
matters. The poetry of Burns is full of truth. 

" Tarn O' Shanter" was received with all the ap- 
plause to which it is richly entitled. " I have seldom 
in my life," says Lord Woodhouslee, " tasted of 
higher enjoyment from any work of genius, than I 
have received from this composition ; and I am much 
mistaken if this poem alone, had you never written 
another syllable, would not have been sufficient to 
have transmitted your name down to posterity with 
high reputation." Of this " happiest of all mix- 
tures of spirituality and practical life," as Sir Eger- 
ton Brydges calls the tale, the poet was justly 
proud. He carried it in his pocket, and read it 
willingly to those in whose taste he had any trust. 
He read it to my father. His voice was deep, manly, 
and melodious, and his eye sparkled as he saw the 
effect of his poem on all around — young and old. 
A writer who happened to be present on business, 
stung, perhaps, with that sarcastic touch on the 
brethren — 

" Three lawyers' tongues turn'd inside out, 
With lies seam'd like a beggar's clout." 

remarked, that he thought the language describing 
the witches' orgies obscure. " Obscure, sir!" said 
Burns, " ye know not the language of that great 
master of your own art — the devil. If you get a 
witch for a client, you will not be able to manage 
her defence." 



246 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" The Whistle" is another poem of this happy 
season. The meeting, it seems, for deciding the own- 
ership of the musical relique should have taken place 
sooner. — " Big with the idea," says Burns to Rid- 
dell, " of this important day (October 16, 1789) at 
Friars-Carse, I have watched the elements and 
skies, in the full persuasion that they would an- 
nounce it to the astonished world by some pheno- 
mena of terrific portent. The elements, however, 
seem to take the matter very quietly ; they did not 
even usher in this morning with triple suns and a 
shower of blood, symbolical of the three potent he- 
roes and the mighty claret-shed of the day. For me, 
as Thomson, in his Winter, says of the storm, I shall 

* Hear astonish'd and astonish'd sing.' " 

The story of the " Whistle" is curious : — A Dane 
came to Scotland with the Princess of Denmark, in 
the reign of our sixth James, and challenged all the 
topers of the north to a contest of the bottle. A 
Whistle of ebony was to be the prize of the day ; 
this he had blown in triumph at the courts of 
Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, and Warsaw, 
and was only prevented from doing the same at the 
Scottish court by Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwellton, 
who, after a contest of three days and three nights, 
left the Dane under the table, 

«* And blew on the whistle his requiem shrill." 

On Friday, 16th October, 1790, the Whistle was 
again contended for in the same element by the 
descendants of the great Sir Robert : — 

" Three joyous good fellows, with hearts clear of flaw ; 
Craigdarroch, so famous for wit, worth, and law ; 
And trusty Glenriddel, so skilled in old coins, 
And gallant Sir Robert, deep read in old wines." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 247 

And that their deeds might not be inglorious, they 
chose an inspired chronicler to attend them : — 

" A bard was selected to witness the fray, 
And tell future ages the feats of the day : 
A bard who detested all sadness and spleen, 
And wished that Parnassus a vineyard had been." 

This is one of the most dramatic of lyrics ; all is 
in character, and in the strictest propriety of senti- 
ment and language. The contest took place at 
Friars-Carse, a place of great natural beauty ; but 
the combatants closed the shutters against the love- 
liness of the landscape, either up the Nith or down, 
and lighting the dining-room, ordered the corks of 
the claret to be drawn. They had already swallow- 
ed six bottles a-piece, and day was breaking, when 
Ferguson decanting a quart of wine, dismissed it 
at a draught. Upon this Glenriddel, recollecting 
that he was an elder, and a ruling one in the kirk, 
and feeling he was waging an ungodly strife, meekly 
withdrew from the contest, and 

" Left the foul business to folks less divine," 

Though Sir Robert could not well contend both with 
fate and quart bumpers, he fought to the last, and 
fell not till the sun arose. Not so Ferguson, and 
not so Burns ; the former sounded a note of triumph 
on his Whistle 

" Up rose our bard, like a prophet in drink : — 
* Craigdarroch, thou'lt soar when creation shall sink ! 
But if thou would flourish immortal in rhyme, 
Come— one bottle more— and have at the sublime !' " 

In truth, it is said that the Poet drank bottle for 
bottle in this arduous contest, and, when day -light 
came, seemed much disposed to take up the con- 
queror. 



248 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Though Burns had ten large parishes to look after 
as exciseman, and though the inclination of husband- 
men for smuggling in those days kept him busy, his 
fields seemed as well cultivated, and his crops little 
less luxuriant, than those of his neighbours. But he 
felt that his plough was held without profit, and his 
dairy managed without gain, and remained for weeks 
at a time at home, intent on other matters than 

" Learning his tuneful trade from every bough." 

How he demeaned himself as gauger, farmer, and 
poet, has been related by an able and observant 
judge : — "I had an adventure with him," said 
Ramsay of Ochtertyre, "when passing through 
Dumfriesshire in 1790, with Dr. Stewart of Luss. 
Seeing him pass quickly near Closeburn, I said to 
my companion, ' that is Burns.' On coming to the 
inn (Brownhill), the ostler told us he would be back 
in a few hours to grant permits ; that where he 
met with anything seizable he was no better than 
any other gauger : in every thing else he was a per- 
fect gentleman. After leaving a note to be deliver- 
ed to him on his return, I proceeded to his house, 
being curious to see his Jean, &c. I was much 
pleased with his uxor Sabina qualis, and the Poet's 
modest mansion, so unlike the habitation of ordinary 
peasants. In the evening, he suddenly bounced in 
upon us, and said as he entered, ' I come to use 
the words of Shakspeare, stewed in haste.' In fact 
he had ridden incredibly fast. We fell into conver- 
sation directly, and soon got into the mare magnum 
of poetry. He told me he had now gotten a story 
for a drama, which he was to call * Rob Mac- 
quechan's Elshin/ from a popular story of Robert 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 249 

Bruce being defeated on the water of Cairn, when 
the heel of his hoot being loosened in the flight, he 
applied to Rob to fix it, who, to make sure, ran his 
awl nine inches up the king's heel. We were now 

going on at a great rate, when Mr. S popped 

in his head, which put a stop to our discourse, which 
had become very interesting. Yet in a little while 
it was resumed ; and such was the force and versa- 
tility of the bard's genius, that he. made the tears 
run down Mr. S.'s cheeks, albeit unused to the 
poetic strain." The Poet had imagined a drama 
commencing with the early vicissitudes of the for- 
tunes of Bruce — recording his strange, his heroic 
and sometimes laughable adventures, till all ended 
in the glorious consummation at Bannockburn. He 
allowed, as was his wont, the subject to float about 
in his mind, and drew out no plan or list of charac- 
ters on paper. 

We find Burns at this period informing Graham 
of Fintry that the excise business went on much 
smoother with him than he had expected, owing to 
the generous friendship of Mitchell the collector, and 
Findlater the supervisor. — " T dare to be honest," 
said he, " and I fear no labour. Nor do I find my 
hurried life greatly inimical to my correspondence 
with the muses ; I meet them now and then as I 
jog among the hills of Nithsdale, just as I used to 
do on the banks of Ayr." Of the lyrical fruit of 
this intercourse, I must render some account. 

In the composition of a song, Burns went to 
work like a painter : what a fine living model is to 
an artist forming a Venus or a Diana, a lovely wo- 
man was to the Poet. He was fascinated through 



250 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the eye ; he thought of the looks of the last fair one 
he had met, and mused on her charms till the proper 
inspiration came ; and then he laid out colours wor- 
thy of a goddess, on 

*' Fair or foul, it maks na whether." 

Jean Lorimer, " The lass of Craigie-burn-wood," 
had levity at least equal to her beauty. When the 
first song in her praise was written she lived at 
Kemmishall in Nithsdale ; she was extremely hand- 
some, with uncommon sweetness in her smile, and 
joyousness in the glance of her eye. The Poet 
measured his verse over her charms to gratify a gen- 
tleman of the name of Gillespie, who was contending 
in vain with a military adventurer of the name of 
Whelpdale for the honour of her love. In " My 
tocher's the jewel," he expresses the scorn which a 
young lady feels at the selfish sentiments of her 
lover : 

" It's a' for the apple he'll nourish the tree; 
It's a' for the hinney he'll cherish the bee : 
My laddie's sae mickle in love with the siller, 
He canna have love to spare for me." 

From love he went to wine ; nothing came wrong 
to him. In this his poetic power resembled his 
conversational ability. " Gudewife, count the 
lawin" is the very essence of sociality and glee: — 

" Gane is the day, and mirk's the night, 
But we'll ne'er stray for faut o' light ; 
For ale and brandy's stars and moon, 
And blu de-red wine's the rising sun." 

A little jacobitism was in his heart when he wrote 
" There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame ;" 
a little humour when he penned "What can a young 
lassie do wi' an auld man ?" and in " Yon wild 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 251 

mossy mountains" his mind wandered back to a 
part of his early history, which he says " is of no 
consequence to the world to know." 

In a happier mood of mind Burns composed 
" Wha is that at my bower-door?" — " It was sug- 
gested," said Gilbert, " to my brother, by the Auld 
man's address to the widow, printed in Ramsay's 
Tea-table Miscellany." A vein of pawkie simplicity 
runs through it : — 

" Wha is that at my bower-door? 
O wha is it but Findlay ? 
Then gae yere gate, ye'se no be here— 
Indeed maun I," quo' Findlay. 

« What mak ye sae like a thief? 
O come and see, quo' Findlay. 
Before the morn ye'll work mischief — 
Indeed will I, quo' Findlay. 

" Here this night, if ye remain — 
I'll remain, quo' Findlay. 
I dread ye'll ken the gate again— 
Indeed will I, quo' Findlay." 

" ' The bonnie wee thing' was composed," says 
the Poet, " on my little idol, the charming lovely 
Davies." In a letter to the lady herself, he lets us 
a little into the mystery of his ballad-making ; — " I 
have heard of a gentleman of some genius who was 
dexterous with his pencil ; wherever this person 
met with a character in a more than ordinary degree 
congenial to his heart, he used to steal a sketch of 
the face, merely, he said, as a nota-bene to point 
out the agreeable recollection to his memory. What 
this gentleman's pencil was to him, is my muse to 
me ; and the verses which I do myself the honour 
to send you are a memento exactly of the same kind 
that he indulged in. When I meet with a person 
after my own heart, I positively feel what an ortho- 



252 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

dox Protestant would call a species of idolatry, 
which acts on my fancy like inspiration; and I can 
no more resist rhyming on the impulse, than an 
jEolian harp can refuse its tones to the streaming 
air." No poet has offered prettier reasons for writing 
love-songs. 

These complimental moods gave way to a feeling 
more serious, when the Poet wrote " Ae fond kiss, 
and then we sever." The song, I have heard, al- 
ludes to Clarinda, and is supposed to embody the 
sentiments of the Bard when he bade farewell to 
that Edinburgh beauty. It says all in a few w r ords 
that can be said on the subject ; — 

'« Who shall say that fortune grieves him, 
While the star of hope she leaves him ? 
Me — no cheerful twinkle lights me: 
Dark despair around benights me. 
Had we never loved so kindly, 
Had we never loved so blindly — 
Never met, or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.'' 

The heroine of the " Banks and braes o' bonnie 
Doon," was Miss Kennedy of Dalgarrock, in Ayr- 
shire, a young creature, beautiful, accomplished, and 
confiding ; the song was altered from its original 
simple measure to suit music, accidentally composed 
by a writer in Edinburgh, whom a musician told to 
keep to the black keys of the harpsichord and pre- 
serve something like rhythm, and he would produce 
a Scots air. He did so, and this fine air, with a few 
touches from Clarke, was the result. The despair of 
" Ae fond kiss and then we sever," gave way to the 
gentler sorrows of the " Banks and braes o' bonnie 
Doon;" and, in its turn, " Love will venture in," 
asserted the dignity of successful love. This is a 
very beautiful lyric : the Poet thinks on his mistress, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 253 

and looking at all manner of fine flowers, sees her, 
emblematically, in each : the lily, for purity ; the 
daisy, for simplicity ; and the violet, for modesty, 
are woven into this fragrant and characteristic 
chaplet. 

Having obeyed the impulses of sorrow and serious 
love, mirth touched the strings of his harp, his heart 
brightened up, and he poured out, " O ! for ane- 
and-twenty, Tarn/' The name of the heroine is 
lost ; but her story is true to nature, and cannot be 
soon forgotten : there is a dance of words in the 
song suitable to the liveliness of the sentiment. 
" Sic a wife as Willie had," resembles the ironical 
and sarcastic chaunts of the old rustic ballad-makers : 
the picture of Willie's Spouse, is not painted in 
kindly colours : 

" She has an ee — she has but ane, 

The cat has twa the very colour, 
Five rusty teeth forbye a stump, 

A clapper tongue wad deave a miller ; 
A whisking beard about her mou', 

Her nose and chin they threaten ither : 
Sic a wife as Willie had 

I wad nae gie a button for her." 

This unsonsie dame dwelt in Dunscore, at no great 
distance from Ellisland ; her descendants have none 
of her unlovesome qualities. 

If Burns looked to living loveliness for the sake 
of making new songs, he looked also with affectionate 
eyes on the old mutilated lyrics of Scotland, and 
repaired them with unequalled skill. To the ballad 
of " Hughie Graham,' 5 he added some characteristic 
touches, as also to " Cock up your Beaver." Into 
the latter he has infused a Jacobite feeling: — 

" Cock up your beaver and cock it fu' sprush, 
We'll over the Border and gie them a brush; 
There's somebody there we'll teach better behaviour ; 
Hey ! my brave Johnnie lad, cock up your beaver." 



254: THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

He softened a little the rudeness of " Eppie Mac- 
nab," added bitterness to " The weary pound o' 
tow;" some of his fine feeling found its way into 
" The Collier laddie," and much acid irony was in- 
fused into " The carle of Kellyburn-braes." — Cro- 
mek informed me, that when he consulted Mrs. 
Burns respecting the changes which the genius of 
her husband had effected in the old songs, she ran 
her fingers along the pages of the Museum, saying, 
" Robert gave that one a brushing — this one got a 
brushing, too : — aye, I mind this one weel, it got a 
gay good brushing!" But when she came to " The 
carle of Kellyburn-braes," she said, " He gave this 
one a terrible brushing." Of these dread additions 
one specimen will suffice : 

" The devil he swore by the edge of his knife, 
He pitied the man that was tied to a wife; 
The devil he swore by the kirk and the bell, 
He was not in wedlock, thank heav'n, but in hell." 

The winter-time, which brings much leisure to the 
farmer, brought little or none to Burns. When he 
saw his corn secured against rain or snow ; his 

" Potatoe bings weel snuggitup frae skaith;" 

his plough frozen in the half- drawn furrow, and 
heard the curler's roaring play intimating that 
winter reigned over the vale, he had to mount his 
horse and do duty as a guager, leaving Ellis] and to 
the skill of his wife and the activity of his servants. 
As early as the harvest of 1790, it was visible to 
those acquainted with such matters, that, as a farmer, 
the Poet was not thriving ; the crop promised, in 
the eyes of the calculating, to make but a small re- 
turn, compared with the demand of the rent ; and, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 255 

when he ploughed his ground in the following winter 
and spring, it was whispered that he would do so no 
more. He regretted this the less as he now looked 
upon the Excise as sure bread, and an improving 
appointment. Some time during the year 1791, his 
salary was raised to seventy pounds, and he was 
promised a more compact and less laborious district. 
This eased his mind amid the loss which he knew 
he should sustain, in turning the utensils and stock 
of Ellisland into money. He did not communicate 
his intentions to any one, though he hesitated not to 
say that he was losing by his bargain. 

This year he was doomed to lose old friends with- 
out acquiring new ones. The death of the Earl of 
Glencairn he regarded as a sore misfortune. That 
nobleman was not rich, nor was his influence great ; 
but he had a sympathy with poetic feelings not 
common to men of rank. When he died, the hopes 
of the Poet seem to have died also ; his " Lament," 
on the occasion, was a sincere one ; the words re- 
quire only to be uttered by a young Bard instead of 
an old one, to apply, in all respects, to himself. 
The verse is lyrical, and the sentiments those of 
nature :— 

" The bridegroom may forget the bride 

Was made his wedded wife yestreen ; 
The monarch may forget the crown 

That on his head an hour has been ; 
The mother may forget the child 

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee ; 
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 

And all that thou hast done for me.-' 

This is the language of a man who thought him- 
self obliged. He wrote nothing half so tender or 
so touching on the death of the beautiful Miss 



256 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Burnet, which happened about this time ; he tried, 
but the words came with reluctance : — 

«.* Life ne'er exulted in so rich a prize 

As Burnet, lovely from her native skies ; 

Nor envious death so triumphed in a blow 

As that which laid the accomplish'd Burnet low." 

Some will like better the compliment which he 
paid her in prose. On returning from a first visit 
to Lord Monboddo, his friend Geddes, of Leith, 
said, " Well, and did you admire the young lady ?" 
— " I admired God Almighty more than ever," said 
the Poet ; " Miss Burnet is the most heavenly of all 
his works !" He did not hesitate to use expressions 
bordering on profanity when speaking of female 
charms. 

In addition to the sorrow which he felt for the 
loss of valuable friends, his horse fell with him and 
broke his arm ; and his farm having swept away 
all his ready money, visions of poverty began to 
hover in his sight. " Poverty," he exclaimed, " thou 
half-sister of Death — thou cousin-german of hell ! 
oppressed by thee the son of genius, whose ambition 
plants him at the tables of the fashionable and polite, 
must see, in suffering silence, his remarks neglected 
and his person despised : while shallow greatness, in 
his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with counten- 
ance and applause." In such sarcastic sentiments 
as these, Burns began more and more to indulge : — 
" How wretched is the man," he says, " that hangs 
upon the favours of the great! — to shrink from 
every dignity of man at the approach of a lordly 
piece of self-consequence, who, amid all his tinsel 
and glitter, and stately hauteur, is but a creature 
formed as thou art— and, perhaps, not so well 
formed." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 257 

He could scarcely resist, however, the request 
of one of the vainest of those " lordly pieces of 
self-consequence," the Earl of Buchan — to come 
to the coronation of the bust of Thomson on Ed- 
nam-hill, at Drybrugh, on the 22nd of September, 
1791. — " Suppose Mr. Burns," thus runs the man- 
date, " should, leaving the Nith, go across the 
country, and meet the Tweed at the nearest point 
from his farm, and wandering along the pastoral 
banks of Thomson's pure parent-stream, catch in- 
spiration in the devious walk, till he finds Lord 
Buchan sitting on the ruins of Drybrugh ; there the 
Commendator will give him a hearty welcome, and 
try to light his lamp at the pure flame of native 
genius, upon the altar of Caledonian virtue." The 
Poet had the sickle in his hand when the invitation 
came ; he laid it down, took a walk along the bank 
of the Nith, composed the verses " to the Shade of 
Thomson," and sent them to apologize for his ab- 
sence. 

If his poetic feelings were awakened by the invi- 
tation of Lord Buchan, his jacobitical partialities 
were gratified by the present of a valuable snuff-box 
from Lady Winifred Maxwell, the last in direct 
descent of the noble family of Nithsdale. This was 
an acknowledgment for his " Lament of Mary 
Queen of Scots." There was a picture of that ill- 
starred princess on the lid. — " In the moment of 
poetic composition," said Burns, " the box shall be 
my inspiring genius." — The ballad is a pathetic one. 
He imagines the queen in an English prison ; she 
hears the birds sing — feels the odour of flowers, and 
her heart swells with the season : — 

vol. i. s 



258 . THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

(e Now blooms the lily by the bank, 

The primrose down the brae ; 
The hawthorn's budding in the glen, 

And milk-white is the slae: 
The meanest hind in fair Scotland 

May rove their sweets amang ; 
But I, the queen of a' Scotland, 

Maun lie in prison Strang." 

He had been reading Percy's ballads, and his verses 
caught the olden hue and tone of those affecting 
compositions. 

The great Glasgow road ran through the Poet's 
ground, and the coach often set down west-country 
passengers, who, trusting to the airt they came from, 
and the accessibility of the bard, made their some- 
times unwelcome appearance at the door of Ellis- 
land. Such visitations — from which no man of 
genius is free — consumed his time and wasted his 
substance — for hungry friends could not be enter- 
tained on air. A neighbour told me that he once 
found a couple of Ayrshire travellers, plaided, 
capped, and over-ailed, seated at the door of Burns 
— their sense of etiquette not allowing them to enter 
the house in such trim. They were drinking punch, 
toasting Ayr — auld town and new — vowing that 
Mauchline was the loveliest of all spots, and Kyle 
the heart of Scotland. They found their way into 
Dumfries some time during the night. 

In the summer of 1791, two English gentlemen 
who had met Burns in Edinburgh, paid him a visit 
at Ellisland. On calling at the house, they were 
told he had walked out on the banks of the Nith. 
They proceeded in search of him, and found him — 

i ' In sooth it was in strange array." 

On a rock that projected into the stream they saw 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 259 

a man angling ; he had a cap of fox-skin on his 
head, a loose great-coat fixed round him by a belt, 
from which hung an enormous Highland broad- 
sword ; it was Burns. He received them with great 
cordiality, and asked them to share his humble din- 
ner. On the table they found boiled beef, with 
vegetables, and barley-broth, of which they partook 
heartily. After dinner, the bard told them he had 
no wine to offer, nothing better than Highland 
whiskey, of which Mrs. Burns set a bottle on the 
table, and placed his punch-bowl of Scottish marble 
before him. He mixed the spirit with water and 
sugar, filled their glasses, and invited them to drink. 
They were in haste — whiskey, to their southron 
stomachs, was scarcely tolerable ; but the ardent 
hospitality of the Poet prevailed — the punch began 
to disappear, and his conversation was unto them as 
a charm. He ranged over a great variety of topics, 
illuminating whatever he touched. He related the 
tales of his infancy and of his youth ; he recited 
some of the gayest and some of the tenderest of his 
poems ; in the wildest of his strains of mirth he 
threw in some touches of melancholy, and spread 
around him the electric emotions of his powerful 
mind. The Highland whiskey improved in its 
flavour ; the marble bowl was again and again 
emptied and replenished ; the Poet's guests forgot 
the flight of time and the prudence becoming visi- 
tors: — at the hour of midnight they lost their way 
returning to Dumfries, and could scarcely count its 
three steeples assisted by the morning dawn. 

Burns still maintained his intercourse with the 
literati of Scotland. He visited Edinburgh, and 
s 2 



260 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

arranged his affairs with the difficult Creech ; called 
on some of his former intimates, and left his card 
at the doors of several lords ; but his reception 
seems, save from one or two, to have been un cordial. 
What the learned thought of the grasp of the Poet's 
mind, may be gathered from the surprise which one 
of them expresses at his comprehending the mean- 
ing of Alison's work on the principles of taste : — 
" I own, sir," said the Poet to the philosopher, 
" that at first glance several of your propositions 
startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clan- 
gour of a trumpet had something in it vastly more 
grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle 
of a jew's-harp ; that the delicate flexure of a rose- 
twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the 
tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and 
elegant than the upright stub of a burdock, and that 
from something innate and independent of all asso- 
ciation of ideas. These I had set down as irre- 
fragable orthodox truths, until perusing your book 
shook my faith." — " This," says Dugald Stewart, 
** I remember to have read with some degree of sur- 
prise at the distinct conception he appeared from it 
to have formed of the general principles of the law 
of association." It would seem, however, that the 
Poet, if convinced, was convinced against his will: 
he was slow in believing that at any time a burdock 
was esteemed equal in loveliness to a rose, or the 
chirp of a hedge-sparrow reckoned as noble as the 
cry of an eagle. 

"As to my private concerns," he says to Dr. 
Moore, " I am going on a mighty tax-gatherer be- 
fore the Lord, and have lately had the interest to 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 261 

get myself ranked on the lists of the Excise as a 
supervisor. I had an immense loss in the death of 
the Earl of Glencairn, the patron from whom all my 
fame and good fortune took its rise ; independent 
of my grateful attachment to him, which was indeed 
so strong that it pervaded my very soul, and was 
entwined with the thread of my existence. So soon 
as the prince's friends had got in, my getting for- 
ward in the Excise would have been an easier busi- 
ness than otherwise it will be." In these modest 
hopes the Poet indulged. He had already num- 
bered himself with " the prince's friends ;" but the 
prince was far from power ; and had Burns lived 
till " the dog had," as he said, " got his day," he 
might have found reason to say with Scripture, 
" put not your trust in princes." 

If his poems of this year are not numerous, the 
M Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson" is one of 
the sweetest and most beautiful of his latter compo- 
sitions. He calls on nature, animate and inanimate, 
to lament the loss of one who held his honours im- 
mediately from God : — 

" Mourn, ye wee songsters of the wood; 
Ye grouse that crap the heather-bud ; 
Ye curlews calling thro' a clud ; 

Ye whistling plover : 
And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood — 

He's gane for ever !" 

He copied out the poem, and sending it to his friend, 
M'Murdo, said, " You knew Henderson ; I have not 
flattered his memory." The hero of this noble poem 
was a soldier of fortune : one who rose by deeds and 
not by birth : he was universally esteemed in the 
northern circles for the generosity of his nature : 



262 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

his courtesy and gentlemanly bearing : he died 
young. 

Burns wrote several new songs, and amended 
some old ones, during this season, for his friend 
Johnson's work. " Afton water" was an offering of 
other days to the accomplished lady of Stair and 
Afton. " Bonnie Bell " is in honour of the charms 
of a Nithsdale dame, and " The deuk's dang o'er my 
daddie "had its origin in an old chaunt, some of the 
words of which the song still retains. " She's fair 
and fause " records the unfortunate termination of a 
friend's courtship ; there is all or more than the 
bitterness of disappointed love in the concluding 
verse : — 

" Whoe'er ye be that woman love, 

To this be never blind, 
Nae ferlie 'tis, tho' fickle she prove, 

A woman has't by kind. 
O woman ! lovely woman fair, 
An angel form's faun to thy share, 
'Twad been o'er mickle to gi'en thee mair — 

I mean an angel mind." 

" The Deil's awa' wi' the Exciseman," is at once 
witty and ludicrous. It harmonized with the feel- 
ings of the north, where a gauger was long looked 
on as a national grievance, or rather insult. " The 
Song of Death " is the last lyric which the rural 
walks of Ellisland inspired. On the 17th of Decem- 
ber, 1791, he copied it for Mrs. Dunlop, and said, — 
" I have just finished the following song, which, to 
a lady, the descendant of Wallace, and herself the 
mother of several soldiers, needs neither preface nor 
apology." He imagines a field of battle, and puts his 
truly heroic song into the mouths of men wounded 
and dying ; the sentiments uttered were those of his 
heart : — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 263 

" In the field of proud honour, our swords in our hands, 
Our king and our country to save, 
While victory shines on life's last ebbing sands— 
O, who would not die with the brave !" 

" This hymn," says Currie, " is worthy of the Gre- 
cian muse, when Greece was most conspicuous for 
genius and valour." Burns thought of printing it 
separately with the air, which is a fine old Highland 
one ; some one whom he consulted, advised him 
against this, and so prevented him from making his 
country acquainted with his unaltered feelings, at 
a time when his character was beginning to be ma- 
ligned by the secret whisperer and the pensioned spy. 

Burns briefly, in his letters to his brother and 
others, intimates the loss he endured by conti- 
nuing in Ellisland ; but he has no where assigned 
reasons or entered into explanations. This has been 
misinterpreted to his injury. He alludes to his own 
trials, when, in 1792, he says to Mrs. Dunlop : — " I 
wish the farmer joy of his new acquisition to his 
family : I cannot say that I give him joy of his life 
as a farmer. 'Tis as a farmer paying a dear, uncon- 
scionable rent, ' a cursed life/ As to a laird farming 
his own property, sowing his own corn in hope, and 
reaping it in spite of brittle weather, in gladness, 
knowing that none can say unto him, ' What 
dost thou V fattening his herds, shearing his flocks, 
rejoicing at Christmas, and begetting sons and 
daughters, until he be the venerated gray-haired 
leader of a little tribe — 'tis ' a heavenly life !' but 
devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another 
must eat !" 

When it was made known in December, 1791, 
that Burns was about to relinquish the lease of Ellis- 



264 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

land, his merits as a farmer were eagerly canvassed 
by the husbandmen around. One imputed his 
failure to the duties of the Excise ; to his being- 
condemned to gallop two hundred miles per week, 
to inspect yeasty barrels, when his farm required 
his presence ; another said that Mrs. Burns was 
intimate with a town life, but ignorant of the labours 
of barn and byre ; a third observed that Ellisland 
was out of heart, and, in short, was the dearest farm 
on Nithsdale ; while James Currie, a sagacious 
farmer, whose land lay contiguous, remarked, when 
I inquired the cause of the Poet's failure : — " Fail ! 
how could he miss but fail, when his servants ate 
the bread as fast as it was baked, and drank the ale 
as fast as it was brewed ? Consider a little : at that 
time close economy was necessary to enable a farmer 
to clear twenty pounds a year by Ellisland. Now, 
Burns' handy-work was out of the question : he 
neither ploughed, nor sowed, nor reaped like a hard- 
working farmer; and then he had a bevy of idle 
servants from Ayrshire. The lasses were ay baking 
bread, and the lads ay lying about the fireside eating 
it warm with ale. Waste of time and consumption 
of food would soon reach to twenty pounds a year." 
Had Mr. Miller of Dalswinton been on the same 
friendly terms with the Poet as when, in a fit of 
generous feeling, he offered him the choice of his 
farms at a rent of his own fixing, Burns might 
have lived long, and, perhaps, prosperously in Ellis- 
land. But they were too haughty in their natures 
to continue friends ; Miller required respect and 
submission, which the Poet was not disposed to pay ; 
and I have heard it averred by one who was in a 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 265 

situation to know, that the former was not loth to 
get rid of a tenant by whose industry he had no 
chance of being enriched, from whom he could not 
well exact rent, and whose wit paid little respect 
to persons. The Poet dispersed his stock and 
implements by auction, among many eager pur- 
chasers ; restored the land and onstead to the pro- 
prietor ; and, paying him one pound fourteen shil- 
lings for dilapidations in thatch, glass, and slating, 
moved off with his household to Dumfries, leaving 
nothing at Ellisland but a putting-stone, with which 
he loved to exercise his strength — a memory of his 
musings which can never die, and three hundred 
pounds of his money sunk beyond redemption, in a 
speculation from which all augured happiness. 



PART IV:- DUMFRIES. 

Burns removed his wife and children, with his 
humble furniture, to a house near the lower end of 
the Bank-Vennel in Dumfries. The neighbourhood 
was to his mind ; and as this was near the stamp- 
office, it is probable that John Syme, the " Stamp- 
office Johnnie," of the Poet's election ballad, in- 
fluenced his choice. He had other neighbours whom 
he could not but esteem : Captain Hamilton lived 
on the opposite side of the way ; Provost Staig, 
with whose family Burns was already intimate, was 
but a few doors off, while Dr. Maxwell, a skilful 
physician, an accomplished gentleman, and a con- 
firmed republican, dwelt in the next street. The 
Sands, where cattle are bought and sold, was beside 



266 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

him, the Nith was within a good stone's cast — the 
town, too, is compact and beautiful. 

The Poet had no expensive acquaintance to 
entertain ; and his wife, with a single servant, was 
frugal, and anxious to make the little they had go 
far. But he had no longer the rough abundance of 
a farm to resort to ; his meal, his malt, his butter, 
and his milk, were all to buy, and his small salary 
required the guidance of a considerate head and 
hand. To calculate was easy, had it been possible 
to lay down an exact system of expenditure ; as a 
man of genius, he was liable to the outlay of corres- 
pondence, distant and often unexpected ; he was 
exposed to the inroads of friends and admirers, who 
consumed his time and his substance also ; he longed 
for knowledge, which, to obtain, he had to buy ; he 
desired to see by books what the republic of litera- 
ture, of which he was a member, was about, and 
this required money ; and he was, moreover, of a 
nature kindly and hospitable, and could not live in 
that state of frugal circumspection, which a gentle- 
man who kept a house and sometimes a horse on 
seventy pounds per annum, required. 

Even the wandering poor were to the Poet a 
heavy tax ; he allowed no one to go past his door 
without a halfpenny or a handful of meal. He 
was kind to such helpless creatures as are weak in 
mind, and saunter harmlessly about: a poor half-mad 
creature — the Madge Wildfire, it is said, of Scott — 
always found a mouthful ready for her at the bard's 
fire-side ; nor was he unkind to a crazy and tippling 
prodigal named Quin. — " Jamie," said the Poet one 
day as he gave him a penny, " you should pray to 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 267 

be turned from the evil of your ways ; you are ready 
to run now to melt that into whiskey." — " Turn," 
said Jamie, who was a wit in his way, " I wish some 
one would turn me into the worm o' Will Hyslop's 
whiskey-still, that the drink might dribble con- 
tinually through me." — "Well said, Jamie!" an- 
swered the Poet, " you shall have a glass of whiskey 
once a week for that, if you'll come sober for it." A 
friend rallied Burns for indulging such creatures : — 
" You don't understand the matter," said he, " they 
are poets ; they have the madness of the muse, and 
all they want is the inspiration— a mere trifle !" 

The labours of the Excise now and then led him 
along a barren line of sea-coast, extending from 
Caerlaverock-castle, where the Maxwells dwelt of 
old, to Annan water. This district fronts the coast 
of England ; and from its vicinity to the Isle of 
Man, was in those days infested with daring smug- 
glers, who poured in brandy, Holland-gin, tea, to- 
bacco, and salt, in vast quantities. Small farmers, 
and persons engaged in inland traffic, diffused these 
commodities through the villages ; they were gene- 
rally vigorous and daring fellows, in whose hearts a 
gauger or two bred no dismay. They were well 
mounted, acquainted with the use of a cutlass, an 
oak-sapling, or a whip loaded with lead ; and when 
mounted between a couple of brandy-kegs, and their 
horses' heads turned to the hills, not one Exciseman 
in ten dared to stop them. To prevent the disem- 
barkation of run-goods, when a smuggling craft 
made its appearance, was a duty to which the Poet 
was liable to be called, and many a darksome hour 
he was compelled to keep watch, that the peasantry 



268 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

might not have the pleasure of drinking tea or 
brandy duty free. There was something which 
suited his fancy in all this. He had, galloping from 
point to point — much excitement of mind, and hopes 
of golden booty, but not without blows. 

In whatever adventure he was engaged, " Still 
his speech was song." Mounted on the successor 
of Jenny Geddes, whose mortal career closed at 
Ellisland, he " muttered his wayward fancies as he 
roved," and sang the beauty of the maidens of the 
land, and the pastoral charms of the country. It 
was in one of his expeditions against the smugglers 
that he wrote the brief but exquisite lyric, " Louis 
what reck I by thee ?" To say much in a few words 
is one of the characteristics of his muse : — 

" Louis, what reck I by thee, 
Or Geordie on his ocean ? 
Dy vor, beggar loons to me, 
I reign in Jeanie's bosom !" 

" Out over the Forth " is another of his short and 
lucky compositions, " The carding o't" belongs to 
the same class ; nothing in all the compass of lyric 
verse is more truly natural : — 

" I coft a stane o' haslock woo 

To make a coat to Johnie o't ; 
For Johnie is my only jo, 

I lo'e him best of ony yet. 
For though his locks be lyart gray, 

And though his brow be beld aboon, 
Yet I hae seen him on a day 

The pride of a' the parishen." 

One day, during the month of August, he was 
surprised by a visit from Miss Lesley Baillie, now 
Mrs. Cuming of Logie, a beauty of the west of Scot- 
land. — " On which," said Burns to Mrs. Dunlop, 
" I took my horse, though God knows I could ill 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 269 

spare the time, accompanied her father and her 
fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the 
day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think, when I 
left them, and riding home, I composed the follow- 
ing ballad" Some of the verses of this song are in 
his best manner : — 

" To see her is to love her, 

And love but her for ever ; 
For nature made her what she is, 

And never made anither. 
The deil he couldna skaith thee, 

Nor aught that wad belang thee 
He'd look into thy bonny face, 

And say, ' I canna wrang thee.' " 

Most of the songs which I have hitherto noticed 
were written for the Museum of Johnson. A can- 
didate of higher pretence now made his appearance ; 
this was George Thomson. " I have," said he in a 
letter to Burns, " employed many leisure hours in 
selecting and collecting the best of our national me- 
lodies for publication. I have engaged Pleyel, the 
most agreeable composer living, to put accompani- 
ments to these, and also to compose an instrumental 
prelude and conclusion to each air. To render this 
work perfect, I am desirous of having the poetry im- 
proved, wherever it seems unworthy of the music ; 
and that it is so, in many instances, is allowed by 
every one conversant with our musical collections. 
To remove this reproach would be an easy task to 
the author of ' the Cotter's Saturday Night,' and for 
the honour of Caledonia I would fain hope he may 
be induced to take up the pen." 

An application such as this appealed to too many 
associations for Burns to resist ; he replied with 
something like the enthusiasm of a lover when his 



270 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

mistress asks a favour, " As the request you make," 
said the Poet, September 16, 1792, " will positively 
add to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall 
enter into your under taking with all the small portion 
of abilities I have strained to their utmost execution 
by the impulse of enthusiasm. If you are for Eng- 
glish verses, there is on my part, an end of the 
matter. Whether in the simplicity of the ballad or 
the pathos of the song, I can only hope to please 
myself in being allowed, at least, a sprinkling of 
our native tongue. As to any remuneration, you 
may think my songs either above or below price, 
for they shall absolutely be the one or the other. In 
the honest enthusiasm with which I embark in your 
undertaking, to talk of money, would be downright 
prostitution of soul." 

To stipulations such as these Thomson could have 
no objections to offer ; he was glad to get the Bard 
on his own romantic terms. The first fruits of the 
bargain was " The Lea Rig." Though a beautiful 
song, it seems not to have been to the satisfaction of 
the Poet. " I tried my hand on the air," he says, 
" and could make nothing more of it than the verses 
which I enclose. Heaven knows they are poor 
enough ! All my earlier songs are the breathings of 
ardent passion ; and though it might have been easy, 
in after times, to have given them a polish, yet that 
polish would have defaced the legend of my heart 
which is so faithfully inscribed on them." 

" Highland Mary" followed this. The lyrical 
flow of the verse, and the truth and pathos of the 
sentiments, make it a favourite with all who have 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 271 

voices or feelings. " I think," says the Poet, " the 
song is in my happiest manner ; it refers to one of 
the most interesting passages in my youthful days ; 
and I own I should be much flattered to see the 
verses set to an air, which would ensure celebrity. 
Perhaps, after all, 'tis the still glowing prejudice of 
my heart that throws a borrowed lustre over the 
merits of the composition." — He makes inanimate 
nature a sharer in his rapture : — 

" How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk ! 

How rich the hawthorn's blossom ! 
As underneath their fragant shade 

I clasped her to my bosom ! 
The golden hours, on angel wings, 

Flew o'er me and my dearie ; 
For dear to me as light and life 

Was my sweet Highland Mary." 

This exquisite lyric proves how much the pas- 
sionate affections of his youth still moved him. He 
was ready, when Mary's image rose on his fancy, to 
pour out his feelings in song ; he was more than 
usually inspired whenever he thought of her. The 
thorn, under whose shade the lovers sat, is still 
pointed out and held sacred by the peasantry. 

The season of winter was propitious to the muse 
of Burns ; there was something of old habit in this : 
the long evenings bring leisure to the farmer, and 
the farmer was still strong in him. " Auld Rob 
Morris" was written in November ; the idea is taken 
from an earlier song, but the Burns-spirit soon 
gained the ascendant ; he has painted the portrait of 
his heroine in similes : — 

« She's fresh as the morning the fairest in May ; 
She's sweet as the evening amang the new hay ; 
As blythe and as artless as lambs on the lea, 
And dear to my heart as the light to my ee." 



272 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" Duncan Gray," came to the world in December; 
had he come in summer he could not have been more 
" a lad of grace ;" he went a wooing in a pleasant 
time, on gude Yule night, when all were joyous — 
but 

•« Maggie coost her head fu' hiegh, 
Looked asklent and unco skeigh, 
Gart poor Duncan stand abiegh." 

He was not however to be daunted with this ; he 
knew woman better: — 

" Duncan fleeched and Duncan prayed, 
Meg was deaf as Ailsa craig ; 
Duncan sighed baith out and in ; 
Grat his een baith bleer'd and blin ; 
Spak o' lowpin owre a linn !" 

She relented. — " Duncan Gray," said the Poet, is 
a light horse-gallop of an air which precludes senti- 
ment — the ludicrous is its ruling feature." 

" O ! poortith, cauld and restless love," is a song 
full of other feelings : the heroine is said to be Jean 
Lorimer, the lass of Craigie-burn-wood ; and this is 
countenanced by the sentiment of one impassioned 
verse : — 

" Her een sae bonnie blue betray 

How she repays my passion ; 
But prudence is her o'erword ay 

She talks of rank and fashion. 
O wha can prudence think upon, 

And sic a lassie by him ? 
O wha can prudence think upon, 

And sae in love as I am ?" 

A being of a more celestial nature inspired that 
magnificent lyric, " The Vision." . The ruined col- 
lege of Lincluden, which stands among antique trees 
on a beautiful plot of rising ground, where the 
Cluden unites with the Nith, a little above Dumfries, 
was a favourite haunt of the Poet, as it is of all 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 273 

lovers of landscape beauty. On a moonlight even- 
ing he imagined himself musing alone among the 
splendid ruins : the dust of a Scottish princess and 
the bones of one of the intrepid Douglasses brought 
recollections of ancient independence to his mind, 
while the quiet and beautiful scenery around 
awakened inspiration. For liquid ease of language 
and heroic grandeur of conception " The Vision" is 
unequalled ; the commencing verse prepares us for 
the coming of something more than human : — 

" As I stood by yon roofless tower, 

Where the wa' flower scents the dewy air, 
Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower, 

And tells the midnight moon her care — 
The winds were laid, the air was still, 

The stars they shot along the sky, 
The fox was howling on the hill, 

And distant echoing glens reply." 

"While enjoying the scene, and looking on the 
northern streamers, the Vision of Liberty descended 
or arose before him ; not the blood-stained nymph 
of that name beloved by the Jacobin Club, but a 
Liberty of Scottish extraction, stern and stalwart, of 
the rougher sex, attired like an ancient minstrel, 
carrying a harp, and wearing the cognizance of 
freedom. The majestic apparition touched his harp 
and chaunteda strain which spoke of former joys and 
present sorrows, in language which the Poet durst 
only describe. This fine lyric was intended, with 
some modifications, to be wrought into the drama of 
" The Bruce," a subject never wholly out of the 
Bard's fancy. 

From musing on woman's love and man's freedom, 
Burns was rudely awakened. An inquiry regarding 
the sentiments which he entertained and the lan- 
vol. I. T 



274 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

guage in which he had indulged concerning " Thrones 
and Dominations" was directed to be made by the 
Commissioners of Excise, pursuant to instructions 
it is said received from high quarters. It will pro- 
bably never be known who the pestilent informer 
against the Poet was ; some contemptible wretch 
who had suffered from his wit, or who envied his 
fame, gave the information on which the Board of 
Excise acted, and he was subjected to a sort of in- 
quisition. The times, indeed, in which he lived 
were perilous, and government found it no easy 
thing to rule or tranquilize the agitated passions of 
the people. A new light had arisen on the nations : 
freedom burst out like a summer sun in France ; 
monarchy was trampled under foot; democracy arose 
in its place ; equality in all, save intellect, was 
preached up, and the true order of nature was to be 
restored to the delighted world. 

This doctrine was welcomed widely in Scotland ; 
it resembled, in no small degree, the constitution of 
the Calvinistic kirk, which is expressly democratic ; 
and it accorded with the sentiments which education 
and knowledge awaken — for who is so blind as not 
to see that idols, dull and gross, occupy most of the 
high places which belong to genius as a birthright t 
It corresponded wondrously too, with the notions of 
Burns : it harmonized with the plan which he per- 
ceived in nature, and was in strict keeping with his 
sentiments of free-will and independence. — " He was 
disposed," says Professor Walker, " from constitu- 
tional temper, from education, and from the acci- 
dents of life, to a jealousy of power, and a keen 
hostility against every system which enabled birth 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 275 

and opulence to intercept those rewards which he 
conceived to belong to genius and virtue." That 
he desired to see true genius honoured, and wealthy 
presumption checked — that he wished to take his 
place on the table-land among peers and princes, 
and obtain station and importance — to adorn which 
his high powers, he believed, were given — were 
desires natural to a gifted mind; and it could not be 
but galling for him to see men who had not a tithe 
of his talent rolling in luxury, while he was doomed 
to poverty and dependence. That these senti- 
ments were in the heart of Burns I know ; that he 
ever sought to give them full utterance, or enter- 
tained them farther than as theories grateful to his 
mind, it would be difficult to find proof. 

From these charges Burns strove to defend him- 
self: he addressed his steady friend Graham, of 
Fin try, on the subject ; the letter is dated Decem- 
ber, 1792. — " I have been surprised, confounded 
and distracted by Mr. Mitchell, the collector, telling 
me that he has received an order from your Board 
to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming 
me as a person disaffected to government. Sir, you 
are a husband and a father. You know what you 
would feel to see the much-loved wife of your bosom 
and your helpless prattling little ones turned adrift 
into the world, degraded and disgraced, from a 
situation in which they had been respectable and 
respected. I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, 
no, not though even worse horrors— if worse can be 
than those I have mentioned — hung over my head ; 
and I say that the allegation, whatever villain has 
made it, is a lie ! To the British Constitution, on 
t 2 



276 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

revolution principles, next, after my God, I am most 
devoutly attached. Fortune, sir, has made you 
powerful and me impotent — has given you patronage 
and me dependence. I would not, for my single 
self, call on your humanity; I could brave mis- 
fortune — I could face ruin — for, at the worst, 
* Death's thousand doors stand open ;' but the ten- 
der concerns which I have mentioned — the claims 
and ties which I see at this moment, and feel around 
me — how they unnerve courage and wither resolu- 
lution ! To your patronage, as a man of some 
genius, you have allowed me a claim ; and your 
esteem, as an honest man, I know is my due. To 
these, sir, permit me to appeal ; by these may I 
adjure you to save me from that misery which 
threatens to overwhelm me ; and which, with my 
latest breath I will say it, I have not deserved ?" 

These are the words of his private letter : it en- 
closed another, intended for the eye of the commis- 
sioners, and which was laid before the Board. In 
the second epistle, Burns disclaimed all idea of set- 
ting up a republic, and declared that he stood by 
the constitutional principles of the revolution of 
1688 : at the same time he felt that corruptions 
had crept in, which every patriotic Briton desired to 
see amended. — " This last remark/' says the Poet, 
in his celebrated letter to John Francis Erskine, 
afterwards Earl of Mar, " gave great offence ; and 
one of our supervisors-general, a Mr. Corbet, was 
instructed to inquire on the spot, and to document 
me — 'That my business was to act, not to think; 
and that whatever might be men or measures, it 
was for me to be silent and obedient.' Mr. Corbet 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. "27 I 

was my steady friend ; so, between Mr. Graham and 
him, I have been partly forgiven, only I understand 
that all hopes of my getting officially forward are 
blasted." 

These words were written by the Poet, April 13, 
1793 ; and yet Mr. Findlater, then his superior 
officer, says, " I may venture to assert, that when 
Burns was accused of a leaning to democracy, and an 
inquiry into his conduct took place, he was subject- 
ed, in consequence thereof, to no more than per- 
haps a private or verbal caution, to be more circum- 
spect in future. Neither do I believe his promotion 
was thereby affected as has been stated." Burns, I 
apprehend, knew best how this was ; an order to 
act, and not to think ; and, whatever might be men 
and measures, to be silent and obedient, seems a 
sharp sort of private caution. That the records of 
the Excise-office, as some one assured Lockhart, 
exhibit no traces of this too memorable matter, is 
not to be wondered at : expulsions alone are enter- 
ed — or, if the records say more, memoranda, so little 
to the honour of the commissioners, will neither be 
eagerly sought for, nor willingly found. That Burns 
never got forward is certain ; that he ceased to speak 
of his hopes of advancement, is also true. What 
was the cause of this ? That it did not arise from 
his want of skill or his inattention to his duties, 
Findlater furnishes undeniable testimony, and other 
evidence can readily be found ; nor was it because 
death slipt too early in and frustrated the desire of the 
Board to advance him, for he survived their insult- 
ing and crushing inquiry more than three years and 
a half. He survived, indeed, but he was no longer 



278 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the bright and enthusiastic being who looked for- 
ward with eager hope ; who ascended in fancy the 
difficult steeps of fame, and who set coteries in a roar 
of laughter, or moved them to tears. 

Reasons for this harshness on the part of Govern- 
ment — for the Board of Excise was but the acting 
servant- — have been anxiously sought, in the words 
and deeds of Burns. — "He stood," says Walker, 
"on a lofty eminence, surrounded by enemies as 
well as by friends, and no indiscretion which he com- 
mitted was suffered to escape." His looks were 
watched ; his words weighed ; and wheresoever he 
went the eyes of the malignant and the envious were 
on him. I have been told by one incapable of mis- 
leading me, that Burns sometimes made his appear- 
ance in a club of obscure individuals in Dumfries, 
where toasts were given, and songs sung which re- 
quired closed doors. I have also been informed, that 
when invited to a private dinner, where the enter- 
tainer proposed "the health of William Pitt," the 
Poet said sharply, " Let us drink the health of a 
greater and better man — George Washington ;" and 
it is also true, that when Dumourier, the republican 
general, deserted the cause of his country, and joined 
her enemies, Burns rashly chaunted that short song, 
beginning 

" You are welcome to despots, Dumourier." 

Nay more, I have the proof before me that he wrote 
a scoffing ballad on the foreign sovereigns who 
united to crush French liberty ; but then all these 
matters happened after, not before he was " docu- 
mented" by the Board of Excise. That he forgot 
now and then what was due to the dignity of his 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 279 

genius, is no new admission. The club which sung 
songs with closed doors, did so to hinder the land- 
lady, not the landlord, to hear ; the dinner where 
he toasted Washington, and was sullen because it 
was not drunk, took place in 1793. In Midsum- 
mer the same year, Dumourier forsook the standard 
of his country, and was welcomed by despots ; and 
with regard to the ballad on the sovereigns, I am 
sure the gravest of them all would have laughed 
heartily at the vivid but indecorous wit of the com- 
position. 

That Burns was nevertheless very indiscreet, it 
would be vain to deny. " I was at the play in Dum- 
fries, October, 1792," thus writes, in 1835, a gentleman 
of birth and talent, " the Caledonian Hunt being then 
in town — the play was 6 As you like it ;' Miss Fon- 
tenelle, Rosalind — when * God save the King' was 
called for and sung ; we all stood up, uncovered — 
but Burns sat still in the middle of the pit, with his 
hat on his head. There was a great tumult, with 
shouts of ' Turn him out!' and ' Shame Burns!' 
which continued a good while, at last he was either 
expelled or forced to take off his hat — I forget 
which." 

A more serious indiscretion has been imputed to 
him. Lockhart relates, that on the 27th of Febru- 
ary, 1792, a smuggling brig entered the Solway, and 
Burns was one of the party of officers appointed to 
watch her motions. It was soon discovered that 
her crew were numerous, well armed, and likely to 
resist ; upon which Lewars, a brother exciseman, 
galloped off to Dumfries, and Crawford the superin- 
tendent, went to Ecclefechan for military assistance. 



280 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Burns manifested much impatience at being left on 
a cold exposed beach, with a force unequal to cope 
with those to whom he was opposed, and exclaimed 
against the dilatory movements of Lewars, wishing 
the devil to take him. Some one advised him to 
write a song about it ; on which the Poet taking a 
few strides among the shells and pebbles, chaunted 
" The deil's awa' wi' the exciseman." The song 
was not well composed, when up came Lewars with 
his soldiers, on which Burns, putting himself at their 
head, his pistols in his pockets, and his sword in his 
hand, waded mid-waist deep into the sea, and car- 
ried the smuggler. She was armed. The Poet, 
whose conduct was much commended, purchased 
four of her brass guns, and sent them as a present 
to the French Directory. These, with the letter 
which accompanied them, were intercepted on their 
w r ay to France. The suspicions of government were 
awakened by this breach of decorum, and men in 
power turned their eyes on the bard, and opened 
their ears to all his unguarded sayings. That the 
smuggler was captured chiefly by the bravery of 
Burns I have been often told ; but I never heard it- 
added that he purchased her guns and sent them to 
the Directory. The biographer seems to have had 
his information from persons connected with the 
Excise ; but I suspect the story is not more accu- 
rate than that, when accused of a leaning to demo- 
cracy, " he was subjected to no more than perhaps a 
verbal or private caution to be more circumspect in 
future." 

Burns felt humbled and hurt : he was degraded 
in his own eyes ; he was pushed rudely down from 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 281 

his own little independent elevation, and treated 
like an imbecile, whose words and actions were to 
be regulated by the ungentle members of the Board 
of Excise. — " Have I not," he says to Erskine, " a 
more precious stake in my country's welfare than 
the richest dukedom in it ? I have a large family of 
children, and the prospect of many more. I have 
three sons who I see already have brought into 
the world souls ill qualified to inhabit the bodies of 
slaves." 

It is pleasing to escape with the Poet from the 
racks of the Board of Excise, and accompany him 
on his excursions along the banks of the Kith, 
where he soothed his spirit by composing songs for 
the publications of Thomson or Johnson. In Ja- 
nuary, 1793, he wrote " Lord Gregory ;" in March, 
" Wandering Willie " and " Jessie," and in April, 
" The Poor and Honest Sodger," The first is bor- 
rowed in some measure from the exquisite old ballad 
of " The Lass of Lochroyan," the second is more 
original : — 

" Loud blew the cauld winter winds at our parting; 
It was na the blast brought the tear to my ee ; 
Now welcome the simmer, and welcome my Willie ; 
The simmer to nature — my Willie to me." 

The third was written in honour of the young and 
the lovely Jessie Staig of Dumfries ; and the fourth 
was awakened by the prospect of coming war, which 
ended not till it laid many kingdoms desolate, and 
put the half of Britain into mourning. In the re- 
marks of Thomson on his songs he was not always 
acquiescent. — " Give me leave," he says, " to cri- 
ticise your taste in the only thing in which it is 
reprehensible. You know I ought to know some- 



282 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS 

thing of my own trade ; of pathos, sentiment, and 
point you are a complete judge : but there is a 
quality more necessary than either in a song, and 
which is the only essence of a ballad, I mean sim- 
plicity. Now, if I mistake not, this last feature you 
are apt to sacrifice to the foregoing." He was as 
anxious about the purity of Scottish music as about 
the simplicity of the verse. " One hint," he says 
to Thomson, "let me give you: whatever Pleyel 
does, let him not alter one iota of the original Scot- 
tish airs ; let our national music preserve its native 
features. They are, I own, frequently wild and 
irreducible to the more modern rules, but on that 
very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of 
their effect." 

The beauties whom Burns met on Nithside, in- 
spired many of the sweetest of his songs : the 
daughters of his friend, John M'Murdo, were then 
very young ; but they were also very lovely, and 
had all the elegance and simplicity which poets love. 
To Jean M'Murdo we owe the ballad of " Bonnie 
Jean." " I have some thought," he says to Thom- 
son, " of inserting in your index, or in my notes, 
the names of the fair ones the themes of my songs. 
I do not mean the name at full, but dashes or as- 
terisms, so as ingenuity may find them out. The 

herione of the foregoing is Miss M , daughter of 

Mr. M ofD , one of your subscribers; I 

have not painted her in the rank which she holds in 
life, but in the dress and character of a cottager." 
He thought very well of this composition ; he asks 
if the image in the following sweet verse is not 
original : — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 283 

•« As in the bosom of the stream 

The moonbeam dwells at dewy e'en : 
So trembling pure was faithful love 
Within the breast of bonnie Jean." 

Her sister Phillis, a young lady equally beautiful 
and engaging, inspired the Poet also ; though he 
imputes the verses in which he sings of her charms, 
to the entreaty of Clarke the musician. The first of 
these lyrics begins: — 

( ' While larks, with little wing, 
Fann'd the pure air, 
Tasting the breathing spring, 
Forth I did fare." 

The other contains that fine verse: — 

" Her voice is the song of the morning, 

That wakes through the green spreading grove, 
When Phoebus peeps over the mountains 
On music, and pleasure, and love." 

Ideal loveliness sometimes appeared to him in his 
solitary wanderings. Autumn he reckoned a pro- 
pitious season for verse ; he wrote thus to Thomson 
in the month of August : — " I rode out yestreen for 
a gloamin shot at the muses, when the muse that 
presides over the shores of Nith, or, rather, my old 
inspiring dearest nymph, Coila, whispered me the 
following : I have two reasons for thinking that it 
was my early sweet simple inspirer that was at my 
elbow, * smooth gliding without step,' and pouring 
the song on my glowing fancy. In the first place, 
since I left Coila's native haunts, not a fragment of 
a poet has arisen to cheer her solitary musings by 
catching inspiration from her; so I more than sus- 
pect she has followed me hither, or, at least, makes 
me occasional visits." The song which this celestial 
lady of the west awakened, commences thus : 



284 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" Come let me take thee to my breast, 
And pledge we ne'er shall sunder, 
And I shall spurn as vilest dust 
The world's wealth and grandeur." 

From lower sources other lyrics of this period are 
said to have sprung. To the winning looks of a 
young girl who " brewed gude ale for gentlemen," 
and was indulgent even to rakish customers, we owe 
the song of " The golden locks of Anna/' of which 
there are several versions, and none quite decorous, 
though a clerical biographer of the Bard has said 
otherwise. A purer song, " The mirk night of 
December" had its origin in a similar quarter: — 

" O May ! thy morn was ne'er so sweet, 
As the mirk night of December, 
For sparkling was the rosy wine, 
And private was the chamber, 
And dear was she I darena name, 
But I will ay remember." 

Burns was as ready with his verse to solace the 
woes of others, as to give utterance to his own. 
" You, my dear sir," he says to Thomson, " will 
remember an unfortunate part of our worthy friend 
Cunningham's story, which happened about three 
years ago. That struck my fancy, and I endeavoured 
to do the idea justice as follows." — The song ex- 
pressing the sentiments of his friend is that sublime 
one — 

" Had I a cave on some wild distant shore." 

The concluding verse, a lady told me, always made 
her shudder: — 

" Falsest of womankind! canst thou declare 
All thy fond plighted vows — fleeting as air ? 
To thy new lover hie, 
Laugh o'er thy perjury : 
Then in thy bosom try 
What peace is there." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 285 

To the influence of thunder, lightning, and rain 
we owe, we are told, the heroic Address of Bruce 
at Bannockburn. 1 abridge the legend of John 
Syme, who accompanied the Poet on a tour in Gal- 
loway : — "I got Burns a grey Highland sheltie to 
ride on. We dined the first day, July 27, 1793, at 
Glendinning's of Parton — a beautiful situation on 
the banks of the Dee. In the evening we walked 
out and viewed the Alpine scenery around ; imme- 
diately opposite, we saw Airds, where dwelt Lowe, 
the author of Mary's Dream. This was classic 
ground for Burns ; he viewed { the highest hill 
which rises o'er the source of Dee/ and would 
have staid till the ' passing spirit' appeared, had we 
not resolved to reach Kenmore that night. We 
arrived as ' The Gordons' were sitting down to 
supper. Here is a genuine baron's seat ; the castle, 
an old building, stands on a large natural moat, and 
in front the Ken winds for several miles through a 
fertile and beautiful holm. We spent three days 
with * The Gordons,' whose hospitality is of a po- 
lished and endearing kind. We left Kenmore and 
went to Gatehouse. I took him the moor road, 
where savage and desolate regions extended wide 
around. The sky was sympathetic with the wretched- 
ness of the soil ; it became lowering and dark — 
the winds sighed hollow — the lightnings gleamed — 
the thunders rolled. The Poet enjoyed the awful 
scene ; he spoke not a word, but seemed rapt in 
meditation. In a little while the rain began to fall ; 
it poured in floods upon us. For three hours did 
the wild elements rumble their bellyful upon our 
defenceless heads. We got utterly wet; and to 



286 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

revenge ourselves, the Poet insisted, at Gatehouse, 
on our getting utterly drunk. I said that in the 
midst of the storm, on the wilds of Kenmore, Burns 
was rapt in meditation. What do you think he 
was about? He was charging the English army 
along with Bruce at Bannockburn. He was en- 
gaged in the same manner in our ride home from St. 
Mary's Isle, and I did not disturb him. Next day 
he produced me the Address of Bruce to his troops, 
and gave me a copy for Dalzell." 

Two or three plain words, and a stubborn date or 
two, will go far, I fear, to raise this pleasing legend 
into the regions of romance. The Galloway adven- 
ture, according to Syme, happened in July : but in 
the succeeding September, the Poet communicated 
the song to Thomson in these words : — " There is a 
tradition which I have met with in many places in 
Scotland, that the air of ' Hey, tuttie taitie,' was 
Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. 
This thought, in my yesternight's evening walk, 
warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme 
of liberty and independence, which I threw into a 
kind of Scottish ode, that one might suppose to be 
the royal Scot's address to his heroic followers on 
that eventful morning. I shewed the air to Urbani, 
who was highly pleased with it, and begged me to 
make soft verses for it : but I had no idea of giving 
myself any trouble on the subject, till the accidental 
recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom, 
associated with the glowing ideas of some other 
struggles of the same nature, not quite so ancient, 
roused up my rhyming mania.' ' Currie, to make the 
letter agree with the legend, altered " Yesternight's 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 287 

evening walk" into " solitary wanderings." Burns 
was, indeed, a remarkable man, and yielded, no 
doubt, to strange impulses : but to compose a song 

" In thunder, lightning, and in rain," 

intimates such self-possession as few possess. He 
thus addresses the Earl of Buchan, to whom 
he sent a copy of the song. — " Independent of 
my enthusiasm as a Scotsman, I have rarely met 
with anything in history which interests my feelings 
as a man equal to the story of Bannockburn. On 
the one hand, a cruel usurper, leading on the finest 
army in Europe to extinguish the last spark of 
freedom among a greatly-daring and greatly- injured 
people ; on the other hand, the desperate relics of a 
gallant nation devoting themselves to rescue their 
bleeding country, or perish with her. Liberty! 
thou art a prize truly ; never canst thou be too 
dearly bought!" The simplicity and vigour of this 
most heroic of modern lyrics were injured by length- 
ening the fourth line of each verse to suit the air of 
Lewie Gordon. 

The " Vision of Liberty," and " Scots, wha hae 
wi' Wallace bled;" were to form part of the long- 
meditated drama of " The Bruce." This the Poet 
intimated to his friends in conversation, and also in 
pencil memoranda on one of the blank leaves of 
Collins's poems. Several lines of verse are scat- 
tered among the prose — all shewing on what topic 
he was musing : — 

" Where Bannockburn's ensanguined flood, 
Swell'd with mingling hostile blood, 
Saw Edward's myriads struck with deep dismay, 
And Scotia's troop of brothers win their way. 
O glorious deed, to brave a tyrant's band ! 
O heavenly joy, to free our native land !" 



288 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

His thoughts now and then inclined to dramatic 
composition, and hovered between the serious and 
the comic. — " I have turned my thoughts," he says 
to Lady Glencairn " on the drama. I do not mean 
the stately buskin of the tragic muse. Does not 
your Ladyship think that an Edinburgh audience 
would be more amused with the affectation, folly, 
and whim of true Scottish growth, than by manners 
which by far the greatest part of the audience can 
only know at second-hand ?" There is no question 
that dialogues, characters, and songs, such as Burns 
could conceive and write, would have been welcome 
to a northern, and perhaps a southern audience. 
His inimitable " Jolly Beggars " shews dramatic 
powers of a high order. 

Burns, in his earlier days, lent his muse as an auxi- 
liary to the western clergy ; nor can it be forgotten 
that she fought the battle with a boldness which 
was only endured because the cause was thought to 
be a pious one. In Nithsdale she became a volun- 
teer in a more wordly strife, and lent her breath to 
augment or allay the flame of a contested election. 
When Sir James Johnston of Westerhall, in the year 
1790, offered himself as a candidate for the Dum- 
fries district of burghs, he was opposed by Patrick 
Miller the younger of Dalswinton. The former 
was a good man of an old family, and a determined 
Tory ; the latter was a captain in the army, had 
the promise of youth upon him, and was a resolute 
Whig. Burns, through the impulse of his genius, 
was somewhat of a republican. Old jacobitical pre- 
judices, and the kindness of Graham of Fintry, 
inclined his feelings towards the Tories ; while his 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 289 

connexion with Miller, his regard for M'Murdo, 
his respect for Staig, and his affection for Syme, all 
combined to draw him towards the Whigs. His elec- 
tion-ballads ef this period shew how prudently he 
balanced the various interests. The first of these 
compositions is not inappropriately called " The 
Five Carlines." The burghs of Dumfries, Loch- 
maben, Annan, Kirkcudbright, and Sanquhar are 
cleverly personified in the second verse : — 

" There was Maggie by the banks o' Nith, 

A dame wi 1 pride eneugh ; 
And Marjorie o' the mony Lochs, 

A carline auld and teugh ; 
And blinkin' Bess o' Annandale, 

That dwelt by Solway side; 
And whiskey Jean, that took her gill 

ln'tealloway sae wide ; 
And black Joan frae Crichton-Peel, 

O' gipsey kith and kin : 
Five wighter carlines werena foun' 

The south countrie within." 

The Border dames hesitate whether to send "The 
belted knight" or " The sodger youth to Lunnun 
town, to bring them tidings :" — 

" Then out spak mim-mou'd Meg of Nith, 
And she spake up wi' pride ; 
And she wad send the sodger youth, 
Whatever may betide." 

Not so honest Kirkcudbright : — 

" Then whiskey Jean spake owre her drink — 

' Ye weel ken kimmers a', 
The auld gudeman o' Lunnun town, 

His back's been at the wa' ; 
And mony a friend that kissed his cup 

Is now a fremit wight, 
But it's ne'er be said o' whiskey Jean — 

I'll send the Border Knight.' " 

I have heard Sir Walter Scott recite the verse 
VOL. i. u 



290 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

which personifies Lochmaben, and call it " uncom- 
monly happy :" — 

" Then slow rose Marjorie o' the Lochs, 
And wrinkled was her brow ; 4 

Her ancient weed was russet gray, 
Her auld Scots blood was true." 

" The five Carlines," says one of Burns's biogra- 
phers, " is by far the best-humoured of these pro- 
ductions." He had not seen the Poet's Epistle on 
the same election, addressed to Graham of Fintry. 
The original is before me : the measure was new to 
Burns : the poem is, I believe, new to the reader. 
The contest was now decided. — " The Sirens of 
Flattery," as the Poet said to M'Murdo, " the 
Harpies of Corruption and the Furies of Ambition — 
those infernal deities that preside over the villainous 
business of politics" — had retired from the field : — 

t( Fintry, my stay in worldly strife, 
Friend of my muse, friend of my life, 

Are ye as idle's I am ? 
Come then wi' uncouth kintra fleg, 
O'er Pegasus I'll fling my leg, 

And ye shall see me try him. 

" I'll sing the zeal Drumlanrig bears, 
Who left the all-important cares 

Of princes and their darlin's, 
And bent on winning borough-touns, 
Came shaking hands wi' wabster loons, 

And kissin' barefoot carlins. 

" Combustion through our boroughs rode, 
Whistling his roaring pack abroad 

Of mad unmuzzled lions ; 
As Queensberry's < buff and blue ' unfurled, 
Bold Westerha' and Hopetoun hurled 

To every Whig defiance." 

The Poet then proceeds to relate how his grace of 
Queen sberry forsook the contending ranks — 

" The unmannered dust might soil his star 
Besides, he hated bleeding," 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 291 

but left friends, soft and persuasive, behind to main- 
tain his cause and Miller's : — 

" M'Murdo and his lovely spouse 
(The enamoured laurels kiss her brows) 

Led on the Loves and Graces ; 
She won each gaping burgess' heart, 
While he, all conquering, played his part 

Amang the wives and lasses. • 

«« Craigdarroch led a light-arm'd core, 
Tropes, metaphors, and figures pour 

Like Hecla streaming thunder ; 
Glenriddel, skilled in mouldy coins, 
Blew up each Tory's dark designs, 

And bared the treason under." 

Assistance, of a kind equally effective in all such 
contests, it seems, was resorted to : — 

" Miller brought up the artillery ranks, 
The many -pounders of the banks." 

The commotion which ensued, when the contending 
parties met in the streets of old Dumfries, is well 
described : — 

" As Highland crags by thunder cleft, 
When lightnings fire the stormy lift, 

Hurl down with crashing rattle; 
As flames among a hundred woods ; 
As headlong foam a hundred floods — 

Such is the rage of battle. 

" The stubborn Tories dare to die,— 
As soon the rooted oaks would fly 

Before the approaching fellers ; 
The Whigs come on like Ocean's roar, 
When all his wintry billows pour 

Against the Buchan Bullers." 

Forms were present, it seems, visible only to the 
eyes of the inspired : on the Whig side appeared an 
ominous personage — 

" The muffled murderer of Charles." 

Purer spirits, those of the Grahams, were seen on 

the side of the Tories. But neither the wit of 

woman, the might of man, nor even the presence of 

u 2 



292 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the celestials could hinder the defeat of Johnston 
and the triumph of Miller : the Poet makes his 
lament : — 

" O that my een were flowing burns, 
My voice a lioness, that mourns 

Her darling cubs' undoing ! 
That I might weep, that I might cry, 
While Tories fall, while Tories fly, 
And furious Whigs pursuing ! 

" Thou, Pitt, shalt rue this overthrow, 
And Thurlow growl a curse of woe, 

And Melville melt in wailing ; 
How Fox and Sheridan rejoice, 
And Burke shall sing ( O Prince, arise ! 

Thy power is all prevailing. ' " 

" With regard to your poor Bard," says Burns, 
" he is only a spectator of what he relates. Amid 
the hurly-burly of politics he resembles the red- 
breast in the storm, which shelters itself in the hedge 
and chirps away securely." 

In the four years which intervened between this 
borough contest and the county election, in which 
Heron of Kerroughtree, was opposed by Gordon of 
Balmaghie, the temper of Burns seems to have 
suffered a serious change. In his lyrics he still 
sings with gentleness, and with all the delicacy 
which becomes true love ; but in his election lam- 
poons he is fierce and stern, and even venomous. 
Heron had erected an altar to Independence, and, 
through the agency it is said of Syme, prevailed on 
the Poet to bring verse to the aid of his cause. The 
first of these effusions is a parody on " Fye ! let us 
a' to the bridal." The Poet numbers the friends of 
the candidates, and as he names them gives us a 
sketch, personal and mental. The portrait of Heron 
is happy: — 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 293 

" And there will be trusty Kerroughtree, 
Whose honour was ever his law ; 
If the virtues were packed in a parcel, 
His worth might be sample for a'." 

The best stanzas are the personal ones ; the fol- 
lowing verse is very characteristic : — 

" And there will be maiden Kilkerran, 
And also Barskimmens' gude knight ; 
And there will be roaring Birkwhistle, 
Wha luckily roars in the right." 

He continues his catalogue ; he brings " the Max- 
wells in droves" from the Nithsdale border; the 
lairds of Terraughty and Carruchan — 

" And also the wild Scot of Galloway, 
Sodgering gunpowder Blair." 

In spite of the Poet's song and the exertions of 
friends, Heron lost his election : he was not, however, 
daunted : he contested soon after with more success 
the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright against the Hon. 
Montgomery Stewart. Burns had still the same 
belief in the influence of his wit, and was ready with 
unpremeditated verse. He accordingly imagined 
himself a pedlar or troggar, and, declaring that his 
whole stock consisted of 

" The broken trade of Broughton," 

proceeded to sell, to all who ventured to buy, the 
characters of those who supported Stewart. Some 
of the descriptions of the facetious pedlar are comical 
enough ; he disliked John Stewart, Earl of Gal- 
loway, and assailed him, with all the inveteracy of 
satiric verse : — 

" Here's a noble earl's 
Fame and high renown 
For an auld sang — 
It's thought the gudes were stown." 



294 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Against the Bushbys he bent the bitterest shafts in 
his quiver ; he allowed them talent : in a former 
satire he says of one, 

" He has gotten the heart of a Bushby, 
But, Lord ! what's become of the head ?" 

He is equally unkind in the present lampoon. Of 
John Bushby, of Tinwald-downs, the most accom- 
plished of the name, and Maxwell of Cardoness, he 

says,— 

« Here's an honest conscience 

Might a prince adorn, 
Frae the Downs of Tinwald 

Sae was never worn : 
Here's its stuff and lining, 

Cardoness's head; 
Fine for a sodger 

A' the wale o' lead." 

Muirhead, minister of Orr, had an apple for his 
cognizance : — 

" Here's armorial bearings 
Frae the manse of Orr, 
The crest — an old crab apple, 
Rotten at the core." 

The minister of Buittle was a Maxwell : — 

" Here's that little wadset, 
Buittle' s scrap of truth, 
Pawned in a gin-shop, 
Quenching holy drouth." 

To conclude these sharp and personal things, the 
Poet offers for sale the worth and wisdom of Cop- 
land of Collieston, and, more curious still, 

" Murray's fragments 
Of the ten commands." 



But customers seem scarce, upon which he exclaims, 

" Hornie's turning chapman. 
He'll buy all the pack." 

And so ends his last and bitterest lampoon.—-" I 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 295 

have privately," he says to Mr. Heron, " printed a 
good many copies of the ballad, and have sent them 
among friends all about the country. You have 
already, as your auxiliary, the sober detestation of 
mankind on the heads of your opponents ; and I 
swear, by the lyre of Thalia, to muster on your side 
all the votaries of honest laughter and fair, candid 
ridicule." Heron, on whose side the Poet promised 
to muster the votaries of mirth, was victorious in 
the contest ; but his return was petitioned against : 
a Committee of the Commons declared him unduly 
elected ; and worn in body and harrassed in mind, he 
fell ill at York, and died before he. reached Scotland. 

The wit of Burns, like his native thistle, though 
rough and sharp, suited the multitude better than 
more smooth and polished things : he had not the 
art of cutting blocks with a razor, but dragged his 
victims rudely along the ground at the tail of his 
Pegasus. Pointed and elegant satire, while it af- 
fected the educated gentlemen against whom it was 
directed, would have made no impression on the 
shepherds and husbandmen whose scorn it was the 
Poet's wish to excite. The laughter and ridicule 
which his muse awakened had a local influence only; 
the satire which drove Dr. Hornbook from the parish, 
and made Holy Willie think of suicide, had a wider 
range : the lineaments by which he desired we 
should know his Stewarts, Maxwells, Murrays, 
Muirheads and Bushbys, belonged to private life — 
were accidents of character or matters of imagination, 
and pertained not to general nature. 

I turn gladly to his lyrics. All his songs bear the 
impress of nature ; he himself tells us in what way 



296 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

he made them. — " Until I am complete master of 
the tune in my own singing, such as it is, I can 
never compose for it. My way is this : I consider 
the poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the 
musical expression ; then choose my theme ; "begin 
one stanza ; when that is composed, which is gene- 
rally the most difficult part of the business, I walk 
out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in 
nature around me that are in unison or harmony 
with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my 
bosom ; humming, every now and then, the air with 
the verses I have framed. When I feel my muse 
beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of 
my study, and there commit my effusions to paper ; 
swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my elbow- 
chair, by way of calling forth my own critical stric- 
tures as my pen goes on. Seriously, this at home 
is almost invariably my way." He who desires to 
compose lyric verse according to the character and 
measure of an air, will find the plan of Burns an 
useful one. The poet must either chaunt the tune 
over to himself, or be under its influence while 
writing, else he will fail to get the emphatic words 
to harmonize with the emphatic notes. 

In the art of uniting gracefully the music and 
words, Burns was a great master ; the song which 
he wrote in October, 1793, to the tune of " The 
Quaker's Wife," echoes the music so truly that the 
words and air seem to have sprung from his fancy 
together : — 

« Thine am I, my faithful fair, 
Thine, my lovely Nancy ; 
Every pulse along my veins, 
Every roving fancy." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 297 

The inspiration which produced " Lovely Nancy " 
came from Edinburgh ; that which gave " Wilt thou 
be my dearie/' to the air of the " Sutor's Daughter," 
belonged to Dumfries. The former is written with 
warmth — the latter with respect. He delighted little 
in distant modes of salutation, and was prone to 
imagine the subject of his song beside him, and 
sharing in his rapture : now and then, however, he 
exhibited all the polite respect which the school of 
chivalrous courtship could desire : — 

" Lassie, say thou lo'es me; 

Or if thou wilt ua be my ain, 
Say na thou'lt refuse me ; 

If it winna, canna be, 
Thou for thine may choose me, 

Let me, lassie, quickly die, 
Trusting that thou lo es me." 

The Lady Elizabeth Heron, of Heron, inspired the 
" Banks of Cree" — less by the charms of her per- 
son, than by the music, which is her own composition. 
Cree is a stream beautiful and romantic : — Cluden is 
another stream, which runs not smoother down the 
vale of Dalgonar than it runs in the song of " My 
bonnie dearie " — 

" Hark ! the mavis' evening sang, 
Sounding Cluden woods amang, 
Then a faulding let us gang, 

My bonnie dearie; 
We'll gae down by Cluden side, 
Through the hazels spreading wide, 
O'er the waves that sweetly glide 
To the moon sae clearly." 

When Burns had done searching old-wives' barrels, 
or galloping under the light of the moon along the 
sands of Sol way in search of smugglers, he retired to 
the solitude of his own humble dwelling, or to some 



298 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

lonely place, and imagining beauty to be present, 
sung of its influence with equal truth and elegance. 
The Lass of Craigie-burn-wood seems to have been 
a favourite model for his heroines ; he advises Thom- 
son to adopt his song in her praise, and observes, — 
" The lady on whom it was made is one of the finest 
women in Scotland ; and, in fact, is to me what 
Sterne's Eliza was to him — a mistress, or friend, or 
what you will, in the guileless simplicity of Platonic 
love. I assure you, that to my lovely friend you 
are indebted for many of my best songs. Do you 
think that the sober, gin-horse routine of existence, 
could inspire a man with life, and love, and joy — could 
fire him with enthusiasm, or melt him with pathos 
equal to the genius of your book ? No, no ! When- 
ever I want to be more than ordinary in song — to be 
in some degree equal to your diviner airs — do you 
imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation ? 
Tout au contraire ! I have a glorious recipe — the 
very one that, for his own use, was invented by the 
god of healing and poetry, when erst he piped to the 
flocks of Admetus. I put myself in a regimen of ad- 
miring a fine woman, and in proportion to the ado- 
rability of her charms, in proportion are you delighted 
with my verses ? The lightning of her eye is the 
godhead of Parnassus, and the witching of her smile 
the divinity of Helicon!" 

The offspring of one of these interviews, real or 
imaginary, was that fine lyric — " She says she 
lo'es me best of a'. 5 ' The lady's portrait is limned 
with the most exquisite skill ; and the last verse 
contains a landscape such as the goddess of love 
might desire to walk in. The lonely valley, the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 299 

fragrant evening, and the rising moon were frequent 
witnesses of his poetic rapture : — 

" Let others love the city, 

The gaudy show at sunny noon, 
Gie me the lonely valley, 

The dewy eve, and rising moon ; 
Fair beaming, and streaming 

Her silver light the boughs amang, 
While falling, recalling, 

The amorous thrush concludes his sang ; 
There, dearest Chloris, wilt thou rove 

By wimpling burn and leafy shaw, 
And hear my vows of truth and love, 

And say thou lo'es me best of a' ?" 

The influence of this lady's charms was not of short 
duration. — " On my visit the other day," Burns 
says, " to my fair Chloris, she suggested an idea, 
which I, in my return from the visit, wrought into 
the following song : — 

' My Chloris, mark how green the groves, 
The primrose banks how fair ; 
The balmy gales awake the flowers, 
And wave thy flaxen hair.' v 

Having composed another pastoral song in praise of 
the same lady to the tune of " Rothemurche's Rant," 
he says — " This piece has at least the merit of heing 
a regular pastoral ; the vernal morn, the summer 
noon, the autumnal evening, and the winter night 
are regularly rounded. If I can catch myself in 
more than an ordinary propitious moment, I shall 
write a new ' Craigie-burn-wood ' altogether : my 
heart is much in the theme. The lady is not a little 
proud that she is to make so distinguished a figure 
in your collection ; and I am not a little proud that 
I have it in my power to please her so much." The 
air of " Lumps of Pudding" suggested enjoyments 
of a less ethereal kind than those arising from 



300 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

beauty. On the 18th of November the frost was 
dry and keen. The Poet took a morning walk be- 
fore breakfast, and produced one of his most delight- 
ful songs — 

■' Contented wi' little and can tie wi' mair, 
Whene'er I forgather wi' sorrow and care, 
I gie them a skelp as they're creeping alang 
Wi* a cog o' gude swats, and an auld Scottish sang. 

" I whyles claw the elbow o' troublesome thought, 
But man is a sodger, and life is a faught : 
My mirth and good humour are coin in my pouch, 
And my freedom's my lairdship nae monarch dare touch." 

When his spirit was in the right mood for song, 
Burns generally remembered his country : indeed, 
the glory of Scotland was as dear to his heart as his 
own fame. This sentiment he gave full utterance to 
in his song of " Their groves o' sweet myrtle. " He 
muses on the bright summers and perfumed vales of 
Italy, and then turns to the glen of green breckan, 
where the burn glimmers under the yellow broom, 
on whose banks he had held tryste with his Jean. 
The conclusion which he makes is at once national 
and affectionate : — 

u Though rich is the breeze in their gay sunny vallies, 

ADd cauld Caledonia's blast on the wave, 
Their sweet-scented woodlands that skirt the proud palace, 

What are they ? the haunt of the tyrant and slave. 
The slave's spicy forests and gold bubbling fountains 

The biave Caledonian views with disdain ; 
He wanders as free as the winds of his mountains, 

Save love's willing fetters— the chains of his Jean." 

That the Poet loved his country, he has shewn in 
many a lasting verse ; but when he thought of the 
splendid possessions of the mean and the sordid, and 
of the gold descending in showers on the heads of 
the dull and the undeserving, it required all his 
poetic philosophy to hinder him from repining. He 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 301 

had sung in other days of the honest joys and fire- 
side happiness of husbandmen : he now endeavoured 
to pour the healing balm of verse upon the wounded 
spirits of the poor, the humble, and the unhappy. 
The song of " For a' that, and a' that," must have 
been welcome to many. It flew like wildfire over 
the land : the sentiments accorded with the natural 
desire of man to be free and equal ; and, though not 
permitted to be sung in the streets of some of our 
northern borough-towns, it was chaunted among the 
hills and dales by every tongue. In January, 1795, 
Burns introduced it in these words to Thomson : — 
" A great critic on song, Aikin, says that love and 
wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. 
The following is on neither subject, and consequently 
is no song ; but will be allowed, I think, to be two 
or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into 
rhyme." There are five verses in all, and every one 
strikes the balance against rank in favour of poverty — 

" A king can make a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, and a' that; 
But an honest man's aboon his might, 

Gude faith he mauna fa' that ; 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Our toils obscure and a' that ; 
The rank is but the guinea-stamp, 

The man's the gowd for a' that." 

Those who judge of the peace of mind and hap- 
piness of the Poet by the sentiments of affection and 
rapture which he expresses so easily and so elegantly 
in his songs, would imagine that he lived in a sort 
of paradise, beset by temptation certainly, yet 
triumphing alike over political hatred and social 
allurements. His bright outbursts of verse flashed 
like sunshine amid a winter storm ; they were fever- 



302 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

fits of gladness and joy — came too seldom, and their 
coming could not be calculated upon. The inqui- 
sitorial proceedings of the Commissioners of Excise 
had a deep share in the ruin of Burns. He was per- 
mitted to continue on his seventy pounds a-year, 
with the chance of rising to the station of Supervisor 
by seniority; but the hope of becoming Collector 
could no more be indulged — it was a matter of 
political patronage. From that time forward, some- 
thing seemed to prey on the Poet's mind : he believed 
himself watched and marked ; he hurried from com- 
pany into solitude, and from solitude into company ; 
when alone, he was melancholy and desponding — 
when at table, his mirth was often wild and ob- 
streperous ; he had passionate bursts of pathos and 
unbridled sallies of humour, more than were natural 
to him. 

He had for some time looked on men of rank with 
jealousy ; he now spoke of them in a way that 
amounted to dislike. — " Let me remind you/' he 
thus writes to David Maculloch of Ardwell, June, 21, 
1794, " of your kind promise to accompany me to 
Kerroughtree ; I will need all the friends I can 
muster ; for I am indeed ill at ease whenever I ap- 
proach your honourables and right honourables." 
In a letter to his friend Cunningham, he speaks of 
the conceited dignity which even Scottish lordlings, 
of seven centuries standing, display when they mix 
accidentally with the many-aproned sons of me- 
chanical life. — " I remember," he says, " in my 
plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible 
that a noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man 
could be a knave : how ignorant are plough-boys !" 



THE LIFE OF ROBEFvT BURNS. 303 

He says to another correspondent, " In times like 
these, sir, when our commoners are barely able by 
the glimmer of their own twilight understandings to 
scrawl a frank, and when our lords are what gentle- 
men would be ashamed to be, to whom shall a sink- 
ing country call for help ? To the independent 
country gentleman ! to him who has too deep a 
stake in his country not to be in earnest for her 
welfare : and who in the honest pride of man can 
view with equal contempt the insolence of office and 
the allurements of corruption." 

Something of the same stern spirit may be found 
in many places of his correspondence. He seemed 
to imagine that he could not be in the company of 
men of rank without having to acknowledge his own 
inferior condition in life ; he did not feel so much 
as he ought that his genius raised him to an equality 
with peers, and even princes; or, if he felt it fully, 
he certainly failed to act up to it. He appeared, 
too, to apprehend that courtesy on his part might be 
taken for servility, and he desired to shew, by silent 
and surly haughtiness, that he might be broken, but 
would not bend. Even his most intimate friends 
he now and then put at arms-length ; and if he made 
a present of a song or a new edition of his poems to 
any one, he generally recorded it as a gift of affec- 
tion, and not as an act of homage. — " Will Mr. 
M'Murdo," he thus writes on the introductory leaf 
of a new edition of his poems published in 1793, 
" do me the favour to accept of these volumes ? a 
trifling but sincere mark of the very high respect I 
bear for his worth as a man, his manners as a gen- 
tleman, and his kindness as a friend. However in- 



304 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ferior now or afterwards I may rank as a poet, one 
honest virtue, to which few poets can pretend, I 
trust I shall ever claim as mine — to no man, what- 
ever his station in life or his power to serve me, 
have I ever paid a compliment at the expense of 
truth." 

The witty "boldness of his remarks, and the sar- 
castic freedom of his opinions in matters both of 
church and state, it must be confessed, were such as 
to startle the timid and alarm the devout. He was 
numbered among those who were possessed with a 
republican spirit, and all who had any hopes of 
rising through political influence were more willing 
to find Burns by chance than seek his company of 
their own free will. This will account for the cold- 
ness with which many of the stately aristocracy of 
the district regarded him. Mr. Maculloch of Ard- 
well has been heard to relate, that, on visiting Dum- 
fries one fine evening, to attend a ball given during 
the week of the races, he saw Burns walking on the 
south side of the " plain-stanes," while the central 
part was crowded with ladies and gentlemen drawn 
together for the festivities of the night. Not one of 
them took: ]any notice of the Poet ; on which Mr. 
Maculloch went up to him, took his arm, and wished 
him to join the gentry. — " Nay, nay," he said, 
" that's all over with me now. 

* O ! were we young now as we ance hae been, 
We should hae been galloping down on yon green, 
And linking it owre the lily-white lea, 
And were na my heart light I wad die.' " 

He took his friend home; and while Mrs. Burns, 
with her sweet and melodious voice, sung one of 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 305 

her husband's latest lyrics, the Poet prepared a 
bowl of social punch, which they discussed with no 
little mirth and glee till the hour of the ball arrived. 
A gentleman, the other day, told me that when he 
visited Dumfries in the year 1793, he was warned 
by one or more of the leading men of the county 
to avoid the society of Burns, who neither believed 
in religion as the kirk believed, nor took the fashion 
of his politics from the government. 

Burns imputed his disgrace in the Excise to the 
officers of a regiment then lying in Dumfries, some 
of whom, he believed, informed the government of 
his rash language. That he seldom spoke of them 
but with bitterness and scorn, his correspondence 
will in some places witness. — " I meant," he thus 
writes to Mrs. Riddell, " to have called on you 
yesternight; but as I edged up to your box-door, 
the first object which greeted my view was one of 
those lobster-coated puppies, sitting like another 
dragon guarding the Hesperian fruit. On the con- 
ditions and capitulations you so obligingly offer, I 
shall certainly make my rustic phiz a part of your 
box furniture on Tuesday." 

His dislike of soldiers found its way into his con- 
versation. — " When I was at Arbigland in 1793," 
said my accomplished friend Mrs. Montagu, " I was 
introduced to Burns. His conversation pleased me 
much, and I saw him often. I was at a ball given 
by the Caledonian Hunt in Dumfries, and had stood 
up as the partner of a young officer in the dance, 
when the whisper of * There's Burns ;' ran through 
the assembly. I looked round, and there he was — 
his bright dark eyes full upon me. I shall never 

vol. i. , x 



306 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

forget that look — it was one that gave me no plea- 
sure. He soon left the meeting. I saw him next 
day. He would have passed me but I spoke. I 
took his arm, and said, come, you must see me 
home. * Gladly, madam,' said he ; * but I'll not go 
down the plain-stanes, lest I have to share your 
company with some of those epauletted puppies with 
whom the street is full. Come this way/ We 
went to Captain Hamilton's. Burns, I remember, 
took up a newspaper in which some of the letters of 
a man of genius lately dead were printed. « This is 
sad,' he said: ' did I imagine that one-half of the 
letters which I have written would be published 
when I die, I would this moment recal them, and 
burn them without redemption.' ,; Colonel Jenkin- 
son, who commanded the Cinque-Ports cavalry, 
inherited, it would seem, the dislike of his brother 
soldiers to the Poet ; he refused to be introduced to 
Burns, and never even spoke to him. This was not 
in keeping with the character of the mild and gentle 
Earl of Liverpool. 

Of his situation as an exciseman, Burns seldom 
spoke with much cordiality. He generally intro- 
duced it with an apology, and coupled it with some- 
thing which carried the mind into a new train of 
thought. " Amid all my hurry of business," he 
writes in 1792 to Cunningham, " grinding the faces 
of the publican and the sinner on the merciless 
wheels of the Excise — making ballads, and then 
drinking and singing them, I might have stolen five 
minutes to dedicate to one of the first of friends and 
fellow-creatures." Two years afterwards he writes 
with some bitterness : — " I am a miserable hurried 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 307 

devil, and for private reasons, am forced, like Mil- 
ton's Satan, 

■ To do what yet, though damn'd, I would abhor.' " 

Of his prospects as a revenue officer we have his 
own account given to Patrick Heron, whom he had 
aided at the hustings with election squibs. — " I am 
on the supervisor's list ; and as we come on there by 
precedency, in two or three years I shall be at the 
head of the list, and be appointed, of course. Then 
a Friend might be of service to me in getting me 
into a part of the kingdom which I would like. A 
supervisor's income varies from about one hundred 
and twenty to two hundred a-year ; but the business 
is an incessant drudgery, and w r ould be nearly a 
complete bar to every species of literary pursuit. 
The moment I am appointed supervisor in the com- 
mon routine, I may be nominated on the collector's 
list, and this is always a business purely of political 
patronage. A collectorship varies from better than 
two hundred a-year to near a thousand. They also 
come forward by precedency on the list, and have 
besides a handsome income, a life of complete leisure. 
A life of literary leisure, with a decent competence, 
is the summit of my wishes. It would be the prudish 
affectation of silly pride in me to say that I do not 
need, nor would not be indebted to, a political friend. 
At the same time, sir, I by no means lay my affairs 
before you, thus to hook my dependent situation on 
your benevolence." This modest vision of literary 
independence might have been realized had the Poet 
been prudent and government liberal. 

During this period of the life of Burns, and indeed 
as early as the close of the year 1792, some of his 
x 2 



308 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

friends, hearkening to rumours injurious to his name, 
volunteered counsel or reproof. The wreck of all 
his speculations and hopes preyed on his mind, and 
he sought to escape in company from his own reflec- 
tions. To one of his sensibility of mind, the future 
loured ominous and dark. The company of a man 
of his eminence, and wonderful colloquial powers, 
was much in request; for many loved his genius, 
and all did not fear the frowns of men in office. 
Mrs. Dunlop was the first that admonished. — " You 
must not think, as you seem to insinuate," replied 
the Poet, " that in my way of life I want exercise. 
Of that I have enough : hut occasional hard-drinking 
is the devil to me. Against this I have again and 
again bent my resolution, and have greatly suc- 
ceeded. Taverns I have totally abandoned. It is 
the private parties in the family way, among the 
hard-drinking gentlemen of this county, that do me 
the mischief— but even this I have more than half 
given over." The view which Burns takes of his 
situation is illustrated by an apology tendered to 
Mrs. Riddell, after a social bout at her too hospitable 
table. — " I write you," he says, " from the regions 
of hell, amid the horrors of the damned. Here am 
I, laid on a bed of pitiless furze, while an infernal 
tormentor, wrinkled and cruel, called Recollection, 
with a whip of scorpions, forbids peace or rest to 
approach me, and keeps anguish eternally awake. I 
wish I could be reinstated in the good opinion of the 
fair circle, whom my conduct last night so much of- 
fended ! To the men of the company I will make 
no apology. Your husband, who insisted on my 
drinking more than I chose, has no right to blame 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 309 

me, and the other gentlemen were partakers of my 
guilt." The Poet erred as others erred. 

It must have surprised Burns not a little when 
William Nicol lifted up his voice and admonished 
him. The Poet answered, in a manner so cutting 
and ironical, that the irascible pedant was silent 
ever afterwards. — " O ! thou wisest among the wise, 
meridian blaze of prudence, full moon of discretion, 
and chief of many counsellors ; how infinitely is thy 
rattle-headed, wrong-headed slave indebted to thy 
super-eminent goodness, that from the luminous path 
of thy own right-lined rectitude, thou lookest be- 
nignly down on an erring wretch, of whom the 
zigzag wanderings defy all the powers of calculation, 
from the simple copulation of units up to the hidden 
mysteries of fluxions ? From the cave of my igno- 
rance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential 
fumes of my political heresies, I look up to thee as 
doth a toad through the iron-barred lucerne of a 
pestiferous dungeon to the cloudless glory of a sum- 
mer sun! Sorely sighing, in bitterness of soul I 
say, when shall my name be the quotation of the 
wise, and my countenance be the light of the 
godly, like the illustrious lord of Laggan's many 
hills — that father of proverbs and master of maxims 
— that antipode of folly and magnet among the 
sages, the wise and witty Willie Nicol? As for 
thee, thy thoughts are pure, and thy lips are holy — 
never did the unhallowed breath of the powers of 
darkness and the pleasures of darkness pollute the 
sacred flame of thy sky- descended and heaven- 
bound desires. O ! that like thine were the tenor 
of my life ! like thine the tenor of my conversation 



310 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

— then should no friend fear for my strength, no 
enemy rejoice in my weakness." 

The indifferent success of Nicol seems not to have 
awed John Syme, who, in his parlour at Ryedale 
one afternoon, when the wine flowed and the Poet 
was gracious and confidential, took upon him the 
ungentle task of admonishing his guest. — " I might 
have spoken daggers," said he, " but I did not mean 
them : Burns shook to the inmost fibre of his frame, 
and drew his sword-cane, when I exclaimed, 'What! 
wilt thou thus, and in mine own house V The poor 
fellow was so stung with remorse, that he dashed 
himself down on the floor." Syme told the story, 
in a rather darker manner, to Sir Walter Scott, who 
thus related it in one of his criticisms.-—" It is a 
dreadful truth that, when racked and tortured by 
the well-meant and warm expostulations of an inti- 
mate friend, he started up in a paroxysm of frenzy, 
and, drawing a sword-cane which he usually wore, 
made an attempt to plunge it into the body of his 
adviser — the next instant he was with difficulty 
withheld from suicide." I have heard a much 
gentler version of the story : indeed it has several 
variations, and a biographer has some latitude of 
choice. This is the last and mildest. — " When I 
expostulated with Burns," said Syme, " he stared 
at me, and with such fury of look, that, had a sword 
been in his hand, I am sure he would have run me 
through." I cannot disprove the story, nor yet can 
I altogether believe it. The Poet was far more 
likely, when deeply moved, to draw his sword upon 
himself than on his friend : but though only, perhaps, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 311 

a sort of theatrical nourish, the impression on Syme 
was, that he meant mischief. 

This strange tale induced some to believe that 
Burns was capable of drawing his sword on the un- 
armed and defenceless. Those who are persuaded 
of that w r ill feel disposed to doubt his courage in a 
dispute into which he was precipitated during a 
drinking bout at a friend's table. — " I was, I know," 
he says. " drunk last night, but I am sober this 

morning. From the expressions Captain 

made use of to me, had I nobody's welfare to care 
for but my own, we should certainly have come, ac° 
cording to the manner of the world, to the necessity 
of murdering one another about the business. The 
words were such as generally, I believe, end in a 
brace of pistols ; but I am still pleased to think 
that I did not risk the peace and welfare of a wife 
and children in a drunken squabble. You know 
that the report of certain political opinions being 
mine has already brought me to the brink of de- 
struction. I dread last night's business may be 
interpreted the same way, You, I beg, will take 
care to prevent it. I tax your wish for my welfare 
with that of waiting as soon as possible, on every 
gentleman who was present, and state this to him, 
and, as you please, shew him this letter. What, 
after all, was the obnoxious toast ? ' May our suc- 
cess in the present war be equal to the justice of our 
cause.' A toast that the most outrageous frenzy of 
loyalty cannot object to." 

I know not what the import of those words were 
in the year 1795 ; they seem harmless enough now : 
but a disloyal meaning seems to have been attached 



312 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

to them by some gunpowder captain, who desired to 
find that practice at home among civilians which he 
might have obtained from disciplined hands abroad. 
He seems to have felt that some insult to the go- 
vernment was meant, though he did not exactly 
understand what, and bit his glove in token of mortal 
wrath. With the morning, sobriety brought reflec- 
tion to both sides ; and Clarke found little trouble 
in restoring harmony, which is lucky ; for had a 
duel ensued, the Poet's biographer would have ex- 
perienced some difficulty in accounting for it. A 
handsome pair of pistols, with latchlocks, brass- 
barrelled and screwed, were at this time given to the 
Poet by Blair of Birmingham — his acknowledgments 
were brief and Burns-like, " Sir, I have received and 
proved the pistols, and can say of them, what I would 
not say of the bulk of mankind — they are an honour 
to their maker." 

Amid these intemperate quarrels and political 
heart-burnings, the muse of Burns was not wholly 
idle ; confounded though she no doubt was with the 
unmelodious and mingled cries of loyalty and sedi- 
tion which filled every borough town, she not only 
inspired lyrics, tender and harmonious, but added a 
poem or two to those already published. Among 
the latter are some felicitous verses to " The Max- 
wells' veteran chief," the Laird of Terraughty, on 
his birth-day. 

" If envious buckies view wi' sorrow 
Thy lengthened days on this blest morrow, 
May Desolation's lang-teethed harrow, 

Nine miles an hour, 
Rake them like Sodom and Gomorrha 
In brunstane stoure." 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 313 

The true spirit of the Poet flashes out also in his 
" Address to the Tooth-ache:" there are few who 
cannot attest the accuracy of the description : — 

'< My curse upon thy venom'd stang, 
That shoots my tortured gums alang, 
And through my lugs gives mony a twang, 

Wi' gnawing vengeance, 
Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang, 

Like racking engines. 
" Of a' the numerous human dools, 
111 har'sts, daft bargains, cutty stools, 
Or worthy friends raked i' the mools, 

Sad sight to see, 
The tricks o' knaves, the fash o' fools, 

Thou bear'st the gree." 

It was now his pleasure to satirize the beautiful 
Maria Woodleigh — Mrs. Riddell. How this fair and 
favoured lady happened to move his indignation, is 
something of a mystery. She was young and ac- 
complished : her verses have more of nature in them 
than the ordinary lines of lady-poetesses ; and her 
letters are lively and witty, and partake not a little 
of the sarcastic turn of the Poet's own mind. On 
introducing her in 1793 to Smellie, Burns said, 
" She has one unlucky failing — a failing which you 
will easily discover, as she seems rather pleased with 
indulging in it — and a failing which you will easily 
pardon, as it is a sin which very much besets your- 
self. Where she dislikes or despises, she is as apt 
to make no more a secret of it than where she 
esteems and respects." In a rhyme epistle Burns 
seems to complain that this young beauty paid more 
respect to others than to himself: — 

" I see her face the first of Ireland's sons, 
And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze. 
The hopeful youth in Scotia's senate bred, 
Who owns a Bushby's heart without the head* 
Comes mid a string of coxcombs to display 
That veni, vidi, via ! is his wav. 



314 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

The shrinking Bard adown an alley skulks, 
And dreads a meeting as he dreads the hulks ; 
Though there his heresies in church and state 
Might well award him Muir and Palmer's fate." 

Though severe in this poem, for he calls her 

" A wit in folly and a fool in wit." 

he reserves his sharpest satire for a regular monody 
on her memory : he looks on her grave, and ex- 
claims — 

" How cold is that bosom which folly once fired, 

How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glisten'd; 
How silent that tongue which the echoes oft tired, 
How dull is that ear which to flattery so listen'd !" 

He refrains from calling on the Loves and Graces to 
attend, but summons the offspring of Folly to shower 
over her idle weeds and typical nettles. He then 
imagines a monument : — 

" We'll sculpture the marble, we'll measure the lay — 
Here Vanity strums on her idiot lyre ; 
There keen Indignation shall dart on his prey, 
Which spurning Contempt shall redeem from his ire." 

This sarcastic monody was widely circulated, nor 
was the object of it kept a secret. In the printed 
copies the name is Eliza — but why should the truth 
be concealed ? It is to the honour of Mrs. Hiddell 
that, though affected with the lampoon at first, she 
soon relented, and not only forgave the author and 
received him into favour, but when laid in the grave, 
and the envious and malicious were making mouths 
at his fame, she vindicated his aspersed character ; 
and, in an article written with great tenderness and 
truth, gave us the right image of the man and the 
poet. 

In the year 1795, Britain was threatened by an 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 315 

army of French republicans, and Pitt, in the words 
of Scott, 

" Brought the freeman's arm to aid the freeman's laws." 

Burns at once enrolled himself in the band of gen- 
tlemen volunteers of Dumfries, though not without 
opposition from some of the haughty Tories who 
demurred about his principles, which they called de- 
mocratic. I remember well the appearance of that 
respectable corps ; their odd, but not ungraceful 
dress ; white kersymere breeches and waistcoat ; 
short blue coat, faced with red ; and round hat, 
surmounted by a bearskin, like the helmets of our 
Horse-guards ; and I remember the Poet also — his 
very swarthy face, his ploughman-stoop, his large 
dark eyes, and indifferent dexterity in the handling 
of his arms. Wben those " sons of sedition, Syme, 
Burns, and Maxwell/' as a dull epigram of that day 
worded it, were admitted into the volunteers, it 
was not without hope that a heroic song, rivalling 
" Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," might be forth- 
coming. At a public dinner of the corps, when 
Burns desired leave to give a toast, the proposal was 
received with rapturous applause, and something 
high was hoped for. — " Gentlemen," said he, " may 
we never see the French — and may the French never 
see us :" it was drunk, but with a murmur of dis- 
approbation. The poet felt this ; and, on going 
home, wrote that characteristic and truly national 
song — " Does haughty Gaul invasion threat ?" He 
sent it to Jackson's Dumfries Journal — a great num- 
ber of copies were struck off with the music in Edin- 
burgh, and widely circulated by the author. 

This lyric may be looked on as containing the sen- 



316 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

timents of Burns in matters of government : it re- 
echoed the admirable letter which he addressed to 
Erskine of Mar, and expressed what all lovers of 
Britain felt then, or feel now, on the subject of change 
and alteration : — 

" Does haughty Gaul invasion threat? 

Then let the loons beware, sir, 
There's wooden walls upon our seas, 

And volunteers on shore, sir ; 
The Nith shall rin to Corsincon, 

And Criffel sink in Solway, 
Ere we permit a foreign foe 

On British ground to rally. 

" O ! let us not, like snarling curs, 

In wrangling be divided, 
Till slap come in an unco loon, 

And wi' a rung decide it. 
Be Britain still to Britain true, 

Amang ourselves united; 
For never but by British hands 

Maun British wrangs be righted." 

This song hit the taste and suited the feelings of the 
humbler classes, who added it to " The poor and 
honest Sodger," the " Song of Death," and " Scots 
wha hae wi' Wallace bled/' Hills echoed with it ; it 
was heard in every street, and did more to right the 
mind of the rustic part of the population than all the 
speeches of Pitt and Dundas, or of the chosen " Five- 
and-forty." 

At Midsummer, 1794, Burns removed his in- 
creasing family from the Bank-Vennel to Mill-hole- 
brae, where he leased a small house of two stories — 
plain and humble, but commodious. This street is 
connected with a wide and respectable one, called 
the Kirk-gate ; is near the bleaching or parade- 
ground, on the river-side — a favourite walk in the 
summer mornings and evenings for the citizens of 
Dumfries. The choice, though respectable enough, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 317 

was not a poetical one ; but the house suited his 
humble circumstances : and here he arranged his 
small library, fixed his table, and placed the chair 
on whose hind-legs, as he relates, he poised or 
swung himself, when conceiving his matchless lyrics. 
Here, too, I have heard his townsmen say, while 
passing by during a pleasant afternoon, they could 
see, within the open door, the Poet reading amongst 
his children ; while his wife moved about, set mat- 
ters in order, and looked to the economy of her 
household. He was welcomed to his new house by 
most of his early friends ; and the ladies, who 
sympathized in his fortunes, were among the fore- 
most. Of these, one of the mildest and gentlest 
was Jessie Lewars, now Mrs. Thomson, the sister 
of a brother gauger : she felt the genius, and per- 
ceived, with Mrs. Burns, the fading looks and de- 
clining health of the Poet, and ministered unto him 
and his young family with all the affection of a 
daughter. 

Burns still continued to correspond with several 
distinguished persons ; the circle of his friends had, 
however, gradually diminished; the demon of poli- 
tics made some cold ; distance rendered others 
forgetful ; and death had removed one or two to 
whom he looked up for countenance and support. 
Riddell of Friars-Carse, in whose company he took 
much pleasure, died towards the close of 1 794 : 
and the last time that Burns was in that neighbour- 
hood, he visited the Hermitage, and wrote on the 
window, — 

" To Riddell, much lamented man, 
This ivied cot was dear; 
Reader, dost value matchless worth ? 
This ivied cot revere." 



318 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Sickness and death came next to the Poet's own 
household.-— •" I have lately," says he to Mrs. Dun- 
lop, " drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The 
autumn robbed me of my only daughter and darling 
child, and that at a distance too, and so rapidly, as 
to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to 
her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that 
shock, when I became myself, the victim of a most 
severe rheumatic fever: and long the die spun 
doubtful, until, after many weeks of a sick bed, it 
seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning 
to crawl across my room, and once indeed, have 
been before my own door in the street." To the 
same lady he again w r rites, as he ever wrote to her, 
in a strain of serious thought and deep emotion : — 
" There had much need be many pleasures annexed 
to the states of husband and father ; for, God knows, 
they have many peculiar cares. I cannot describe 
to you the anxious, sleepless hours these ties fre- 
quently give me. I see a train of helpless little 
folks ; me and my exertions all their stay ; and on 
what a brittle thread does the life of man hang ! If 
I am nipt off at the command of fate — even in all 
the vigour of manhood, as I am, such things happen 
every day — gracious God ! what would become of 
my little flock ? 'Tis here that I envy your people 
of fortune." 

The poet was now and then in a more sportive 
mood ; despondency was lifted from him like a cloud, 
and his mind lay in sunshine for an hour or so, till 
reflection darkened it down again. He loved to 
ponder on the fate of men of genius. — " There is 
not," he said to Helen Craik of Arbigland, 8< among 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 319 

all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rue- 
ful a narrative as the lives of the poets. In the 
comparative view of wretches, the criterion is not 
what they are doomed to suffer, but what they are 
able to bear. Take a being of our kind ; give him 
a stronger imagination and more delicate sensibility 
— which, between them, will ever engender a more 
ungovernable set of passions than are the usual lot of 
man ; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some 
idle vagary — such as arranging wild flowers in fan- 
tastical nosegays, tracing the grasshopper to his 
haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of 
the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting 
after the intrigues of butterflies ; in short, send him 
adrift after some pursuit which shall eternally mislead 
him from the paths of lucre, and yet curse him with 
a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures 
that lucre can purchase ; fill up the measure of his 
woes by bestowing on him a spurning sense of his 
own dignity — and you have created a wight nearly 
as miserable as a poet." 

Burns looked with a mistrusting eye towards fu- 
ture fortune ; he saw no outlet for his ambition ; 
poetry had done all for him that poetry was likely 
to do ; and he desired distinction without the means 
of gratifying it. He sometimes lamented to friends 
that he could not find his way into the House of 
Commons ; he felt a strong call towards oratory, 
and all who heard him speak — and some of them 
were excellent judges — admitted his wonderful 
quickness of apprehension and readiness of elo- 
quence. He seemed inclined to believe that misfor- 
tune had marked him out for her own, and that evil 



320 THE LIFE OE ROBERT BURNS. 

was the only certainty in life. — " In this short 
stormy day of fleeting existence," he observes to 
Mrs. Montagu, " when you now and then meet with 
an individual whose acquaintance is a real acquisi- 
tion, there are all the probabilities against you, 
that you will never meet with that character more. 
On the other hand, if there is any miscreant whom 
you hate, or creature whom you despise, the ill 
run of chances will be so against you, that, in the 
jostlings and turnings of life, pop at some unlucky 
corner eternally comes the wretch upon you, and 
will not allow your indignation or contempt one 
moment's repose." 

It cannot be denied that Burns had a fancy fruit- 
ful in images of misery — that he looked on earth and 
thought the water nought and the ground barren, 
and believed its surface to be infested with a hun- 
dred dolts and scoundrels for one wise and honest 
man. — " Sunday," says the Poet to Mrs. Riddell, 
" closes a period of our curst revenue business, and 
may probably keep me employed with my pen till 
noon — fine employment for a poet's pen ! There is 
a species of the human genus that I call the gin- 
horse class : what amiable dogs they are ! round, 
and round, and round they go. Mundell's ox that 
turns his cotton-mill is their exact prototype — 
without an idea or wish beyond their circle ; fat, 
sleek, stupid, patient, quiet, and contented ; while 
here I sit, altogether Novemberish, a damned me- 
lange of fretfulness and melancholy, not enough of 
the one to rouse me to passion, nor of the other to 
repose me in torpor ; my soul flouncing and flutter- 
ing round her tenement like a wildflnch caught amid 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 321 

the horrors of winter and newly thrust into a cage. 
Well, I am persuaded it was of me the Hebrew sage 
prophesied when he foretold : * And behold, on 
whatsoever this man doth set his heart, it shall not 
prosper/ " 

A circumstance occurred in the winter of this year, 
to strengthen those gloomy presentiments. Burns, 
accompanied by his friends, the Richardsons of 
Dumfries, went to Moffat, a distance of fifteen miles, 
to spend the day and dine. The morning was rough 
and cold ; the bridge too over the Kinnel was tot- 
tering and unsafe, and they were obliged to pass 
the flooded water, which they accomplished not 
without difficulty and danger ; the Poet was in one 
of his sunniest moods, and laughed alike at storm 
and stream, and in this temper the party sat down 
to dinner. " We were all in high spirits," said 
Archibald Richardson, " and were waited on by a 
young man not unknown to us, of the name of 
Glendinning, w r ho said he was to be married in a 
day or two. This gave a new turn to the conver- 
sation. Burns descanted with much humour and 
uttered many merry jokes on matrimony : the bride- 
groom smiled, and was pleased to be noticed, and 
we were in the full tide of enjoyment, when on 
removing the last dish, he took a step towards the 
door, dropped down at our feet, and died without 
uttering a word. I never saw a man so much affect- 
ed as the Poet was ; the brightness of his eye was 
gone at once : his face darkened ; he rose and he 
sat down : he looked at my brother and he looked 
at me ; he refused wine, nor did he speak above his 
breath for the remainder of the evening ; he seemed 

VOL. I. Y 



322 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

afraid of offending the spirit of the dead. In this 
mood we journeyed home : and Burns afterwards 
declared to me, that the death of Glendinning colour- 
ed with sadness some of his best compositions." 

During the year 1795, rumour was busy with 
the name of Burns. Those — and I am sorry to say 
they were not few — who longed for his halting, 
whispered about that he was become a lover of low 
company — a seeker of consolation against imaginary 
woes, in the bottle ; and that in his Howff, as he 
called the Globe tavern, he forgot what was due to 
his dignity of mind and his domestic peace ; nay, 
they hesitated not to insinuate that his very genius 
was sunk and fallen, like Milton's Satan, from its 
original brightness. Much of this required no re- 
futation. Burns was fallen off, indeed ! — not in 
brightness of genius, but in vigour and health. His 
walks were shorter, his rests more frequent ; his 
smile had something of melancholy in it, and amid 
the sons of men he looked like one marked out for 
an early grave. My friend, Mrs. Hyslop — daugh- 
ter of Mr. Geddes of Leith — happened to meet him 
one day in the streets of Dumfries, and was affected 
by his appearance. He stooped more than was his 
wont ; his dress, about which he used to be rather 
nice, was disordered and shabby, and he bore on his 
face the stamp of internal sorrow. The meeting was 
cordial and warm ; on parting he wrung her brother, 
who accompanied her, earnestly by the hand, turned 
half away from him, and said, " I am going to ruin 
as fast as I can ; the best I can do is to go consist- 
ently." 

At this period some of the lofty aristocracy of the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 323 

country shunned the Poet's company, not for his 
conduct as a man, but for his sentiments as a poli- 
tician. That Burns was frequently in the company 
of the tradesmen of Dumfries, and joined in their 
socialities, is perfectly true ; his small income hin- 
dered him from seeking loftier society : he who has 
only a shilling in his pocket, must be contented with 
humble friends. But it is untrue that this was the 
only company he kept ; some of the first gentlemen 
in the land were still his friends ; he was a welcome 
and an invited guest at their tables, and might be 
seen walking with their wives and their daughters, 
when his health enabled him to go abroad. 

The best answer which such malevolent repre- 
sentations could receive, has been given by Gray 
and Findlater ; both of these gentlemen lived near 
the Poet ; they were wise and sensible men, and 
incapable of misrepresentation. — " It came under 
my own view professionally," said the former, " that 
Burns superintended the education of his children 
with a degree of care that I have never seen sur- 
passed. In the bosom of his family he spent many 
an hour, directing the studies of his eldest son, 
a boy of uncommon talents. I have frequently 
found him explaining to this youth, then not more 
than nine years of age, the poets from Shakspeare 
to Gray, or storing his mind with examples of heroic 
virtue, as they live in the pages of the English 
historians. I would ask any person of common 
candour, if employments like these are consistent 
with habitual drunkenness ? It is not denied that 
he sometimes mingled with society unworthy of 
him ; he was of a social and convivial nature. In 
y 2 



•324 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

his morning hours, I never saw him like one suffer- 
ing from the effects of last night's intemperance." 
Almost the last words that Gray uttered to me before 
he went to India were about Burns : — " I was some- 
times surprised," he said "at the vigour and ele- 
gance of Robert's versions from the Latin. I told 
him he got help ; he looked up in my face and said, 
1 Yes, my Father helps me.' " 

The testimony of Findlater is equally decisive : — 
" My connexion with Burns," he observed, " com- 
menced immediately after his admission to the 
Excise, and continued to the hour of his death. In 
all that time the superintendence of his behaviour, 
as an officer of the revenue, was a branch of my 
especial province, and I was not an inattentive ob- 
server of the general conduct of a man and a Poet 
so celebrated by his countrymen. He was ex- 
emplary in his attention, and was even jealous of 
the least imputation on his vigilance. It was not 
till near the latter end of his days that there was 
any falling off in this respect ; and this was well 
accounted for by the pressure of disease and accu- 
mulating infirmities. I will further avow that I never 
saw him — which was very frequently while he lived 
at Ellisland, and still more so, almost every day, 
after he removed to Dumfries — in hours of business 
but he was quite himself, and capable of discharg- 
ing the duties of his office ; nor was he ever known 
to drink by himself, or seen to indulge in the use of 
liquor in a forenoon. I have seen Burns in all his 
various phases — in his convivial moments, in his 
sober moods, and in the bosom of his family. In- 
deed, I believe I saw more of him than any other 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 325 

individual had occasion to see, and I never beheld 
any thing like the gross enormities with which he is 
now charged. That when he sat down in the evening 
with friends whom he liked, he was apt to prolong 
the social hours beyond the bounds which prudence 
would dictate is unquestionable ; but in his family, 
I will venture to say, he was never seen otherwise 
than as attentive and affectionate in a high degree." 

The recollections of my friend Dr. Copland Hutchi- 
son are equally in the Poet's favour : — " I lived in 
Dumfries," he observed in a late conversation, 
" during the whole period that Burns lived there ; 
I was much about, and saw him almost daily, but I 
never saw him even the worse of liquor ; he might 
drink as much as other men, but certainly not more." 

Professor Walker, a gentleman of unquestioned 
candour, was two days in the Poet's company, 
during November, 1795. — " I went to Dumfries," 
he says, " and called upon him early in the forenoon. 
I found him in a small house ; he was sitting on a 
window-seat, reading, with the doors open, and the 
family arrangements going on in his presence, and 
altogether without that appearance of snugness and 
seclusion which a studious man requires. After 
conversing with him for some time, he proposed a 
walk, and promised to conduct me through some of 
his favourite haunts. We accordingly quitted the 
town, and wandered a considerable way up the 
beautiful banks of the Nith. Here he gave me an 
account of his latest productions, and repeated some 
satirical ballads which he had composed ; these I 
thought inferior to his other pieces, though they had 
some lines in which vigour compensated for coarse- 



326 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 



ness. He repeated also a fragment of an Ode to 
Liberty, with marked and peculiar energy, and 
shewed a disposition, which was easily repressed, to 
make political remarks." 

To this picture of the first day I shall add a 
sketch of the second : — " On the next morning I 
returned with a friend, and we found him ready to 
pass part of the day with us at the inn. On this 
occasion I did not think him so interesting as he had 
appeared at his outset. His conversation was too 
elaborate ; in his praise and censure he was so de- 
cisive as to render a dissent from his judgment diffi- 
cult to be reconciled with the laws of good breeding. 
His wit was not more licentious than it is in higher 
circles, though I thought him rather unnecessarily 
free in the avowal of his excesses. When it began 
to grow late he shewed no disposition to retire, but 
called for fresh supplies of liquor with a freedom 
which might be excusable, as we were in an inn, 
and no condition had been made, though it might 
have been inferred — had the inference been welcome 
— that he was to consider himself as our guest : nor 
was it till he saw us worn out that he departed, 
about three in the morning, with a reluctance that 
probably proceeded less from being deprived of our 
company than from being confined to his own. I 
discovered in his conduct no errors which I had not 
seen in men who stood high in the favour of society. 
He on this occasion drank freely, without being in- 
toxicated ; a circumstance from which I concluded, 
not only that his constitution was still unbroken, 
but that he was not addicted to solitary cordials. 
Had he tasted liquor in the morning he must have 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 327 

easily yielded to the excess of the^ evening." A 
grave Professor was not likely to speak in commen- 
dation of the late hours and deep socialities prac- 
tised by the Dumfrieshire topers ; men in those 
days seldom quitted the bottle or the punch-bowl 
before daylight came to shew the way home ; and 
it was likely that Burns imagined he was asserting 
a proper independence, when he desired more liquor 
and consulted his own inclination. 

New-year's-day, 1796, found the Poet under a 
triple visitation of poverty, domestic sorrow, and ill 
health: it is not known that he uttered any com- 
plaints ; if he desired life it was less for himself than 
for his wife and children. There is something to me 
inexpressibly touching in the request which he made 
to his collector and paymaster, Mitchell, for the 
humble stipend then due, and without which he 
would have been unable to meet the new year's 
morning. To render it more acceptable he made it 
in rhyme : — ■ 

" Friend of the Poet, tried and leal, 
Wha wanting thee might beg or steal, 
Alake ! alake ! the mickle deil, 

Wi' a' his witches, 
Are at it skelping jig and reel, 

In my poor pouches." 

To this request, which it seems he hesitated to make, 
Burns adds a mournful postcript concerning his 
health : — 

" You've heard this while how I've been licket, 
And by fell Death was nearly nicket : 
Grim loon ! he gat me by the fecket, 

And sair me shook ; 

But by gude luck I lap a wicket, 

And turned a nook." 

His illness now alarmed his friends. Maxwell, 
with equal skill and kindness of heart, attended him 



328 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

carefully : De Peyster, his colonel, a rough veteran, 
and a rhymer if not a poet, visited him and made 
frequent inquiries : the ailing man was touched with 
these attentions, and thanked his commander in 
verse. I shall transcribe a couple of stanzas — he is 
always his own best biographer : — 

f ' My honoured colonel, deep I feel 
Your interest in the Poet's weal, 
Ah ! now sma' heart have I to speel 

The steep Parnassus, 
Surrounded thus by bolus, pill, 

And potion glasses." 

This world, he goes on to say, would be pleasant, if 
care and sickness would stay away, and fortune 
favour worth and merit according to their deservings 
— the strain concludes sadly : — 

" Dame Life, though fiction out may trick her, 
And in paste gems, and frippery deck her, 
Oh ! flickering feeble, and unsicker 

I've found her still, 
Ay wavering like the willow wicker, 

'Tween gude and ill." 

In his lines to Mitchell, Burns seems to acknow- 
ledge — for he never spared himself — that he owed 
some of his illness to folly : in his verses to De 
Peyster he intimates his meaning more clearly, and 
blames, but good-humouredly, the spirit of evil — for 

" Shewing us the tempting ware, 
Bright wines, and bonnie lasses fair, 
To put us daft." 

Thomson began to feel alarm at the ominous silence 
of the Poet, and inquired the cause ; the answer 
was written in April. — " Alas ! I fear it will be 
some time ere I tune my lyre again. ' By Babel's 
streams I've sat and wept/ almost ever since I wrote 
you last : I have only known existence by the pres- 
sure of the heavy ,hand of sickness, and have counted 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 329 

time by the repercussions of pain. Rheumatism, 
cold, and fever have formed to me a terrible combi- 
nation. I close my eyes in misery, and open them 
without hope. I look on the vernal day, and say, 
with poor Fergusson — 

■ Say wherefore has an all-indulgent Heaven 
Light to the comfortless and wretched given ?' " 

The inquiries of Thomsom induced his fancy once 
more to take flight in song : Burns had formerly, 
in health, sung of beauty with 

" Cheeks like apples, which the sun had rudded," 

and adorned with smiles : he looked around, and 
seeing Jessie Lewars watching over him with anxiety 
on her brow and tenderness in her eyes, he honoured 
her with one of his happiest songs : it bears her 
name, and is the last perfect offspring of his muse. 
In all the compass of verse there is nothing more 
touching than this exquisite stanza : — 

* ' Altho' thou maun never be mine, 
Altho' even hope is denied, 
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing 
Than aught in the world beside." 

As the same young lady was moving with a light 
foot about the house, lest she should disturb him, 
the Poet took up a crystal goblet which contained 
wine and water for moistening his lips, and wrote on 
it with a diamond, — 

" Fill me with the rosy wine : 
Call a toast— a toast divine, 
Give the Poet's darling flame, 
Lovely Jessie be the name ; 
Then thou mayest freely boast 
Thou hast given a peerless toast." 

Though now and then well enough to walk out 
in the sunshine, or visit a neighbour, Burns was no 
longer able to do his duties in the Excise. Mr. 



330 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Stobie kindly undertook to perform them for him, 
else, the Poet might have starved ; for it is the rule — 
and a cruel and unjust one — in the Customs, to give 
but half-pay to the sick or those unable to work. 
When the birth-day of the king came, his friend Mrs. 
Riddell, desirous of soothing or pleasing him, re- 
quested him to accompany her to the assembly held 
in the evening, and shew his loyalty. — " I am," 
said he, " in such miserable health, as to be inca- 
pable of shewing my loyalty in any way. Racked 
as T am with rheumatism, I meet every face with a 
greeting like that of Balak to Balaam, — * Come 
curse me Jacob ; and come defy me Israel.' So say 
I ; come curse me that east wind, and come defy 
me the north. Would you have me, in such cir- 
cumstances, copy you out a love- song. I will not 
be at the ball. Why should I ? Man delights not 
me, nor woman neither. Can you supply me with 
the song, ' Let us all be unhappy together;' do so, 
and oblige le pauvre miserable Robert Burns." 

Well or ill, his heart was still with the muse. He 
began to feel that he was soon to pass from among 
the living, and became solicitous about his fame. — 
" I have no copies of the songs I sent you," he says 
to Thomson, " and I have taken a fancy to review 
them all, and possibly may mend some of them ; 
so, when you have complete leisure, I will thank 
you for the originals, or copies. I had rather be the 
author of five well-written songs than of ten other- 
wise." This request refers to those lyrics hitherto 
unpublished, of which Thomson had nearly fifty; 
it is needless to say that this revisal the Poet did 
not live to perform. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 331 

To Johnson, proprietor of the Museum, Burns 
wrote on the 4th of July, — " You may probably 
think that for some time past I have neglected you 
and your work ; but, alas ! the hand of pain, and 
sorrow, and care has these many months lain heavy 
upon me. Personal and domestic affliction have 
almost entirely banished that alacrity and life with 
which I used to woo the rural muse of Scotia. Many 
a merry meeting this publication has given us, and 
possibly it may give us more — though, alas ! I fear 
it. This protracting, slow-consuming illness which 
hangs over me will, I doubt not, my ever-dear friend, 
arrest my sun before he has well nigh reached his 
middle career, and will turn over the poet to far 
other and more important concerns than studying 
the brilliancy of wit or the pathos of sentiment. 
However, hope is the cordial of the human heart, 
and I endeavour to cherish it as well as I can." 
His sun of life was descending to the setting. 

The summer warmth wrought no change in his 
suffering frame ; and he was advised, about the 
close of June, to go into the country. I believe 
Burns followed his own feelings rather than the 
counsel of his physician, when he took up his resi- 
dence at a lonely place called The Brow, on the 
shore of Sol way in Annandale, resolved to try the 
effects of bathing in the sea — a remedy recom- 
mended in almost all cases by our rustic doctors. 
It happened at that time that Mrs. Riddell was re- 
siding near The Brow ; she was herself ailing. On 
hearing of the Poet's arrival, she invited him to din- 
ner, and sent her carriage for him to the cottage 
where he lodged, as he was unable to walk. 



332 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

" I was struck," said she " with his appearance 
on entering the room : the stamp of death was im- 
pressed on his features. His first words were, 
* Well, madam, have you any commands for the 
ather world V I replied that it seemed a doubtful 
case which of us should be there soonest. He looked 
in my face with an air of great kindness, and ex- 
pressed his concern at seeing me so ill with his usual 
sensibility. At table he ate little or nothing. We 
had a long conversation about his present state, and 
the approaching termination of all his earthly pro- 
spects. He spoke of his death with firmness as well 
as feeling, as an event likely to happen very soon, 
and which gave him concern chiefly from leaving 
his four children so young and unprotected, and his 
wife in the hourly expectation of lying-in of a fifth. 
He shewed great concern about the care of his lite- 
rary fame, and particularly the publication of his 
posthumous works. He said he was well aware 
that his death would occasion some noise, and that 
every scrap of his writing would be revived against 
him, to the injury of his future reputation ; that 
letters and verses, written with unguarded freedom, 
would be handed about by vanity or malevolence, 
when no dread of his resentment would restrain 
them, or prevent malice or envy from pouring forth 
their venom on his name. The conversation was 
kept up with great evenness and animation on his 
side. I had seldom seen his mind greater, or more 
collected. There was frequently a considerable de- 
gree of vivacity in his sallies, and they would pro- 
bably have had a greater share had not the concern 
and dejection I could not disguise, damped the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 333 

spirit of pleasantry he seemed willing to indulge. 
We parted about sun-set on the evening of the 5th 
of July ; the next day I saw him again, and we 
parted to meet no more." 

The house which he occupied at The Brow is a 
little distance from the sea, and its windows opened 
toward the west ; at one of these it was the Poet's 
practise to sit during the afternoons, looking at the 
visiters as they passed, and at the sun as it de- 
scended on the distant hills. One fine evening two 
young ladies called : the sun streamed brightly on 
him through the glass, when one of them rose and 
began to draw the window-curtain. Burns looked 
at her with a moistening eye and said — " Thank 
you, my dear ; but oh, let him shine — he will not 
shine long for me." 

With how little advantage to his health he bathed 
in the Solway, may be gathered from his letter to 
Cunningham, of the 7th July. — " Alas ! my friend, 
I fear the voice of the Bard will soon be heard 
among you no more. For these eight or ten months 
I have been ailing, sometimes bedfast and some- 
times not ; but these last three months I have been 
tortured with an excruciating rheumatism, which 
has reduced me to nearly the last stage. You. would 
actually not know me if you saw me. Pale, ema- 
ciated, and so feeble as occasionally to need help 
from my chair — my spirits fled — fled — but I can no 
more on this subject. I beg you to use your utmost 
interest, and that of all your friends, to move our 
Commissioners of Excise to grant me my full salary. 
If they do not grant it, I must lay my account with 
an exit truly en poete — if I die not of disease, I 



334 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

must perish with hunger." The Excise refused 
this last humble boon. 

On the 10th of July, he thus writes to his brother 
Gilbert : — " It will be no very pleasing news to you 
to be told that I am dangerously ill, and not likely 
to get better. An inveterate rheumatism has re- 
duced me to such a state of- debility, and my appe- 
tite is so totally gone, that I can scarcely stand on 
my legs. God keep my wife and children ! If I 
am taken from their head, they will be poor indeed. 
Remember me to my mother." To his wife he 
writes, — " No flesh nor fish can I swallow ; porridge 
and milk are the only things I can taste. I am very 
happy to hear by Miss Jessie Lewars that you are 
all well. My very best compliments to her and to 
all the children, I will see you on Sunday, Your 
affectionate husband, Robert Burns." He like- 
wise wrote to James Armour of Mauchline, his 
father-in-law, saying that his dear wife was nigh 
her confinement ; that his own days were numbered, 
for he felt himself dying, and requesting that Mrs. 
Armour might hasten to Dumfries, to speak and 
look comfort to them. 

Burns had formerly, when his hopes were higher 
and his health good, made it almost a quarrel with 
Thomson that he had sent him five pounds in ac- 
knowledgment of his songs. His situation, in all 
respects, was changed now: he had to bend his 
proud heart to beg from the Excise the continuance 
of his pay ; and' he had to lay himself under obli- 
gations to Stobie, who generously performed his 
duties gratis. He had no money in his pocket, 
and little food in his house ; and, to aggravate 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 335 

these evils, one Williamson, to whom he owed the 
price of the cloth of his volunteer regimentals, 
threatened to sue him for the amount. The Poet 
was alarmed at this ; and on the 12th of July wrote 
to Thomson, saying, " After all my boasted inde- 
pendence, curst necessity compels me to implore 
you for five pounds. A cruel haberdasher, to whom 
I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am 
dying, has commenced a process, and will infallibly 
put me in jail. Do, for God's sake, send me that 
sum, and that by return of post. Forgive me this 
earnestness ; but the horrors of a jail have made 
me half-distracted." To render this very modest 
request more acceptable, the Poet, ill as he was, 
tried his hand on the air of Rothemurche ; and, 
allowing his mind to wander to scenes of former 
happiness, and to one whom he had loved, composed 
the last song he was to measure in this world, begin- 
ning, " Fairest maid on Devon banks." It is written 
in a character indicating the feeble state of his bodily 
strength. 

Thomson instantly complied with the request of 
Burns : he borrowed a five-pound note from Cun- 
ningham, and sent it, saying he had made up his 
mind to enclose the identical sum the Poet had asked 
for when he received his letter. For this he has been 
sharply censured ; and his defence is, that he was 
afraid of sending more lest he should offend the pride 
of the Poet, who was uncommonly sensitive in pecu- 
niary matters. A better defence is Thomson's own 
poverty; only one volume of his splendid work was 
then published ; his outlay had been beyond his 
means, and very small sums of money had come in 



336 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

to cover his large expenditure. Had he been richer, 
his defence would have been a difficult matter. 
When Burns made the stipulation, his hopes were 
high, and the dread of hunger, or of the jail, was 
far from his thoughts : he imagined that it became 
genius to refuse money in a work of national im- 
portance. But his situation grew gloomier as he 
wrote ; he had lost nearly his all in Ellisland, and 
was obliged to borrow small sums, which he found 
a difficulty in repaying. That he was in poor cir- 
cumstances was well known to the world ; and had 
money been at Thomson's disposal, a way might 
have been found of doing the Poet good by stealth : 
he sent five pounds, because he could not send ten : 
and it would have saved him from some sarcastic 
remarks, and some pangs of heart, had he said so at 
once. • 

On the same day that Burns wrote to Thomson 
he also wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, and to his cousin, 
James Burness of Montrose. To the latter he said, 
" A rascal of a haberdasher believes that I am dying, 
and will infallibly put my emaciated body in jail. 
Will you be so good as accommodate me, and that 
by return of post, with ten pounds ? O, James, did 
you know the pride of my heart, you would feel 
doubly for me. Alas ! I am not used to beg. O, 
do not disappoint me — save me from the horrors of 
a jail," To Mrs. Dunlop he said, " I have written 
to you so often without receiving any answer, that I 
w r ould not trouble you again but for the circumstances 
in which I am. An illness which has long hung 
about me, in all probability will speedily send me 
beyond that c bourne whence no traveller returns/ 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 337 

Your friendship, with which for many years you 
honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my soul ; 
your conversation, and especially your correspon- 
dence, were at once highly entertaining and instruc- 
tive. With what pleasure did I use to break up the 
seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to 
my poor palpitating heart. Farewell." The Poet's 
cousin instantly sent ten pounds, though at that time 
far from rich : he afterwards sent five pounds more, 
and generously offered to take Robert and educate 
and bring him up like one of his own sons : Mrs. 
Dunlop also wrote ; and, alarmed with the de- 
spondency of the Poet's last letter, assured him of 
her undiminished esteem, and that his family might 
depend on her friendship : it is needless to say how 
amply this was fulfilled. 

These are supposed, by some, to be the last words 
which he wrote : there are yet later, and of higher 
import and meaning. A& the day of life darkened 
down, Burns began to prepare for the change : he 
remembered that he had written many matters, both 
in verse and prose, of a nature licentious as w r ell as 
witty. He sought to reclaim them, and in some 
instances succeeded ; he had, when his increasing 
difficulties were rumoured about, received an offer 
for them from a bookseller ; but he spurned at 
fifty pounds in comparison of his fair fame, and re- 
fused to sell or sanction them. That such things 
were scattered abroad troubled him greatly ; he 
reflected that the mean and the malignant might 
rake them together ; and, quoting them against 
him, triumph over his fame, and trample on his 
dust. Perhaps he felt some consolation in believing 

VOL. I. Z 



338 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

that his other works transcended these so far in 
talent and in numher, that the grosser would be 
weighed down, cast aside, and forgotten. What 
troubled him most was the imputations of disloyalty 
to his country which had been thrown upon his 
character : he trembled lest he should be represented 
as one who desired to purchase republican license at 
the price of foreign invasion. He had defended 
his character and motives in a letter, uncommonly 
manly and eloquent, to Erskine of Mar ; but he had 
requested it to be burnt, and was not aware that it 
was fortunately preserved. He still retained the 
letter in his memory, and it was the last act of his 
pen to write it out fair, and with comments, into his 
memorandum-book. Burns thus gave his delibe- 
rate — I might say dying — sanction to that important 
letter; it makes statements which cover the Board 
of Excise and the British government of that day 
with eternal shame, and contains sentiments honour- 
able to the head and heart of the Poet — such as 
should live in the bosom of every Briton. 

" You have been misinformed," says Burns, " as 
to my final dismission from the Excise — I am still 
in the service. Indeed, but for the exertions of Mr. 
Graham of Fintry, who has ever been my warm and 
generous friend, I had without so much as a hearing, 
or the slightest previous intimation, been turned 
adrift, with my helpless family, to all the horrors of 
want. In my defence to their accusations, I said, 
that whatever might be my sentiments of republics, 
ancient or modern, as to Britain I abjured the idea; 
that a constitution, which, in its original principles, 
experience had proved to be every way fitted for our 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 339 

happiness in society, it would be insanity to sacrifice 
to an untried visionary theory ; — that, in considera- 
tion of my being situated in a department, however 
humble, immediately in the hands of people in power, 
I had forborne taking an active part, either per- 
sonally or as an author, in the present business of 
reform ; but that, where I must declare my senti- 
ments, I would say there existed a system of cor- 
ruption between the executive power and the 
representative part of the legislature which boded 
no good to our glorious constitution, and w T hich 
every patriotic Briton must wish to see amended. 
My last remark gave great offence, and Mr. Corbet 
was instructed to inquire on the spot, and to docu- 
ment me — 'That my business was to act, not to 
think.'" A nobleman connected with the Pitt ad- 
ministration, to whom I repeated these last words, 
smiled bitterly and said — " They are as absurd as 
they are cruel." 

Having removed the veil of mystery which hung 
too long over this transaction, and established him- 
self as a lover of his country with all who know 
what patriotism is, Burns proceeds to discuss his 
hopes of fame, and his character as a man and a 
poet.— ~" The partiality of my countrymen," he ob- 
serves, " has brought me forward as a man of ge- 
nius, and has given me a character to support. In 
the poet I have avowed manly and independent sen- 
timents which, I trust, will be found in the man. 
My honest fame is my dearest concern, and a thou- 
sand times I have trembled at the idea of those de- 
grading epithets that malice or misrepresentation 
may affix to my name. I have often, in blasting 
z 2 



340 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

anticipation, listened to some future hackney scrib- 
bler, with the heavy malice of stupidity exulting in 
his hireling paragraphs. 'Burns, notwithstanding 
the fanfaronade of independence to be found in his 
works, and after having been held forth to public 
view and to public estimation as a man of some 
genius, yet, quite destitute of resources within him- 
self to support his borrowed dignity, dwindled into 
a paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his 
insignificant existence in the meanest of pursuits, 
and among the vilest of mankind/ — In your hands, 
sir, permit me to lodge my disavowal and defiance 
of the slanderous falsehood. Burns was a poor man 
by birth, and an exciseman by necessity ; but I 
will say it — the sterling of his honest worth no po- 
verty could debase, and his independent British 
mind oppression might bend, but could not subdue." 
These sentiments need no comment : in them we 
hear the voice of Burns speaking from the grave, 
desiring justice rather than mercy. 

Sea-bathing relieved for awhile the pains in the 
Poet's limbs ; but his appetite failed ;- he was op- 
pressed with melancholy ; he looked ruefully for- 
ward and saw misery and ruin ready to swallow his 
helpless household up. He grew feverish on the 
14th of July ; felt himself sinking, and longed to 
be at home. He returned on the 18th in a small 
spring cart ; the ascent to his house was steep, and 
the cart stopped at the foot of the Mill-hole-brae ; 
when he alighted he shook much and stood with 
difficulty ; he seemed unable to stand upright. He 
stooped, as if in pain, and walked tottering towards 
his own door ; his looks were hollow and ghastly, 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 341 

and those who saw him then never expected to see 
him in life again. 

It was soon spread through Dumfries that Burns 
had returned from The Brow much worse than 
when he went away, and it was added that he was 
dying. The anxiety of the people, high and low, 
was very great. I was present and saw it. Wher- 
ever two or three were together their talk was of 
Burns, and of him alone. They spoke of his his- 
tory, of his person, and of his works — of his witty 
sayings and sarcastic replies, and of his too early 
fate with much enthusiasm, and sometimes with 
deep feeling. All that he had done, and all that 
they had hoped he would accomplish, were talked 
of: half-a-dozen of them stopped Dr. Maxwell in 
the street, and said, " How is Burns, sir?" He 
shook his head, saying, " he cannot be worse," and 
passed on to be subjected to similar inquiries farther 
up the way. I heard one of a group inquire, with 
much simplicity, " Who do you think will be our 
poet now?" 

Though Burns now knew he was dying, his good 
humour was unruffled, and his wit never forsook 
him. When he looked up and saw Dr. Maxwell at 
his bed-side, — " Alas !" he said, " what has brought 
you here ? I am but a poor crow, and not worth 
plucking." He pointed to his pistols, those already 
mentioned the gift of their maker, Blair of Birming- 
ham, and desired that Maxwell would accept of 
them> saying they could not be in worthier keeping, 
and he should never more have need of them. This 
relieved his proud heart from a sense of obligation. 
Soon afterwards he saw Gibson, one of his brother- 



342 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

volunteers, by the bed-side with tears in his eyes. 
He smiled and said, — " John, don't let the awkward 
squad fire over me !" 

His household presented a melancholy spectacle : 
the Poet dying; his wife in hourly expectation 
of being confined : four helpless children wander- 
ing from room to room, gazing on their miserable 
parents, and but too little of food or cordial kind to 
pacify the whole or soothe the sick. To Jessie 
Lewars, all who are charmed with the Poet's works 
are much indebted : she acted with the prudence of 
a sister and the tenderness of a daughter, and kept 
desolation away, though she could not keep disease, 
— " A tremor," says Maxwell, " pervaded his 
frame ; his tongue, though often refreshed, became 
parched ; and his mind, when not roused by con- 
versation, sunk into delirium. On the second and 
third day after his return from The Brow, the fever 
increased and his strength diminished. On the 
fourth day, when his attendant, James Maclure, held 
a cordial to his lips, he swallowed it eager] y v — rose 
almost wholly up — spread out his hands — sprang 
forward nigh the whole length of the bed — fell on 
his face and expired. He was thirty-seven years 
and seven months old, and of a form and strength 
which promised long life ; but the great and inspired 
are often cut down in youth, while 

•< Villains ripen gray with time." 

His interment took place on the 26th of July ; 
nor should it be forgotten, in relating the Poet's 
melancholy story, that, while his body was borne 
along the street, his widow was taken in labour and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 343 

delivered of a son, who survived his birth but a 
short while. The leading men of the town and 
neighbourhood appeared as mourners ; the streets 
were lined by the Angushire Fencibles and the 
Cinque Ports Cavalry, and his body was borne by 
the Volunteers to the old kirk-yard with military 
honours. The multitude who followed amounted 
to many thousands. It was an impressive and a 
mournful sight; all was orderly and decorous. The 
measured steps, the military array, the colours dis- 
played, and the muffled drum — I thought then, and 
think now — had no connexion with a Pastoral Bard. 
I mingled with the mourners. On reaching the 
grave into which the Poet's body was about to de- 
scend, there was a pause among them, as if loth to 
part with his remains ; and when the first shovel- 
full of earth sounded on the coffin -lid, I looked up, 
and saw tears on many cheeks where tears were not 
usual. The Volunteers justihed the surmise of 
Burns by three ragged and straggling vollies : the 
earth was heaped up, and the vast multitude melted 
silently away. 

The body of Burns was not, however, to remain 
long in its place. To suit the plan of a rather showy 
mausoleum, his remains were removed into a more 
commodious spot of the same kirk-yard, on the oth 
of June, 1815. The coffin was partly dissolved 
away ; but the dark curling locks of the Poet were 
as glossy, and seemed as fresh, as on the day of his 
death. In the interior of the structure stands a 
marble monument, embodying, with little skill or 
grace, that well-known passage in the dedication to 
the gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt: — " The 



344 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

poetic Genius of my country found me, as the pro- 
phetic bard Elijah did Elisha — at the plough ; and 
threw her inspiring mantle over me." The Poet's 
dust has been a second time disturbed. At the 
funeral of his widow, April 1834, two or three be- 
lievers in the romantic science of craniology disin- 
terred his skull, applied their compasses, and satis- 
fied themselves that Burns had capacity equal to the 
composition of " Tam-o-Shanter," " The Cotter's 
Saturday Night," and " To Mary in Heaven." " O 
for an hour of Burns for these mens sake !" exclaims 
a kindred spirit, " were there a witch of Endor in 
Scotland, it would be an act of comparative piety in 
her to bring up his spirit : to stigmatize them in 
verses that would burn for ever would be a gra- 
tification for which he might think it worth 
while to be thus brought again upon earth."* 
All mankind have heard of the malediction which 
Shakspeare utters from his monument, and of the 
dread which came upon the boors of Stratford- 
on-Avon as they presumed to gaze on his dust : 
no such fears, however, fell upon the cranio- 
logists of Dumfries : the clock struck one as they 
touched the dread relic : they tried their hats upon 
the head, and found them all too little ; and, having 
made a mould, they deposited the skull in a leaden 
box, " carefully lined with the softest materials," 
and returned it once more to the hallowed ground ! 
Here, as to a shrine, flock annually vast numbers of 
pilgrims ; many, very many, are from America ; not 
a few from France and Germany ; and the list-book 



* The Doctor, &c, vol. iii., page 33. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 345 

contains the names of the most eminent men of 
England, Scotland, and Ireland. 

Though Burns died poor, the generous activity of 
his friends and admirers, among whom Syme, Max- 
well, and Macmurdo, were active and liberal, placed 
his young widow and helpless children beyond 
the reach of want. Currie, the chief benefactor of 
all, wrote the Poet's life and edited his works : Lord 
Sidmouth placed his eldest son Robert in the Stamp- 
ofhce : Lord Panmure sent fifty pounds annually to 
his widow, till her sons were able to kiterpose and 
take the pious duty on themselves ; and William 
Nicol and James Glencairn went out to India on 
cadetships, one of which was bestowed by the gene- 
rous Sir James Shaw. Francis Wallace died young, 
so did Maxwell : the street in which the Poet died 
was named Burns Street : the walks in which he 
mused were remembered and respected, and his 
widow lived and died in the house which he had 
occupied. She behaved with equal prudence and 
propriety ; lived in comfort, and aided by the 
counsel and advice of her younger brother, a London 
merchant of great respectability, preserved her af- 
fairs in excellent order, and was enabled to save a 
small sum out of her annual income. 

Thus lived and died Robert Burns, the chief of 
Scottish Poets. He seems to have been created to 
shew how little classic lore is required for the hap- 
piest nights of the muse — how dangerous to domestic 
peace burning passions and touchy sensibilities are 
— and how divinely a man may be inspired, with- 
out gaining bread or acquiring importance in the 
land his genius adorns. 



346 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

Burns, in his youth, was tall and sinewy, with 
coarse swarthy features, and a ready word of wit or 
of kindness for all. The man differed little from the 
lad ; his form was vigorous, his limhs shapely, his 
knees firmly knit, his arms muscular and round, his 
hands large, his fingers long, and he stood five feet ten 
inches high. All his movements were unconstrained 
and free : — he had a slight stoop of the neck, betoken- 
ing a holder of the plough ; and a lock or so of his 
dark waving hair was tied carelessly behind with two 
casts of naifcow black ribbon. His looks beamed 
with genius and intelligence ; his forehead was 
broad and clear, shaded by raven locks inclining to 
curl; his cheeks were furrowed more with anxiety 
than time ; his nose was short rather than long ; his 
mouth, firm and manly : his teeth, white and re- 
gular ; and there was a dimple, a small one, on his 
chin. His eyes were large, dark, and lustrous ; I 
have heard them likened to coach-lamps approaching 
in a dark night, because they were first seen of any 
part of the Poet. — " I never saw," said Scott, " such 
another eye in a human head, though I have seen 
the most distinguished men of my time." In his 
ordinary moods, Burns looked a man of a hundred ; 
but when animated in company, he was a man of 
a million ; his swarthy features glowed ; his eyes 
kindled up till they all but lightened ; his ploughman 
stoop vanished ; and his voice — deep, manly, and 
musical — added its sorcery of pathos or of wit, till 
the dullest owned the enchantments of genius. 

His personal strength was united to great activity ; 
he could move a twenty-stone sack of meal without 
much apparent effort, and load a cart with bags of 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 34? 

corn in the time, one of his neighbours said, that 
other men were talking about it. A mason was hew- 
ing him a stone for a cheese-press, and Burns took 
pleasure as a side was squared to turn over the huge 
mass unaided. A large pebble is still pointed out 
at Ellisland, as his putting-stone ; and though no 
living man in Nithsdale perhaps can poise it in 
the air, the tradition proves the popular belief in his 
great strength. He delighted in feats of rural acti- 
vity and skill ; he loved to draw the straightest furrow 
on his fields, to sow the largest quantity of seed-corn 
of any farmer in the dale in a day, mow the most 
rye-grass and clover in ten hours of exertion, and 
stook to the greatest number of reapers. In this he 
sometimes met with his match. After a hard strife on 
the harvest field, with a fellow-husbandman, in which 
the Poet was equalled :— " Robert," said his rival, 
" I'm no sae far behind this time, I'm thinking ?" 
— " John," said he in a whisper, " you're behind in 
something yet — I made a sang while I was stook- 
ing !"■ — I have heard my father say that Burns had 
the handsomest cast of the hand in sowing corn he 
ever saw on a furrowed field. 

Burns desired as much to excel in conversation as 
he did in these fits and starts of husbandry ; but he 
was more disposed to contend for victory than to 
seek for knowledge. The debating club of Tar- 
bolton was ever strong within him ; a fierce lampoon 
or a rough epigram was often the reward of those 
who ventured to contradict. him. His conversation 
partook of the nature of controversy, and he urged 
his opinions with a vehemence amounting to fierceness. 
All this was natural enough when he was involved 



348 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

in argument with the boors around him; but he was 
disposed, when pressed in debate, to be equally dis- 
courteous and unsparing to the polite and the titled. 

In the company of men of talent he was another 
man ; he was then among his peers, and listened with 
attention, and spoke with a modest eloquence which 
surprised many. — " I think Burns," said Robertson 
the historian to Professor Christieson, " was one of the 
most extraordinary men I ever met with ; his poetry 
surprised me very much, his prose surprised me 
still more, and his conversation surprised me more 
than both his poetry and prose." — " His address," 
says Robert Riddell, " was pleasing ; he was neither 
forward nor embarrassed in manner ; his spirits were 
generally high, and his conversation animated. His 
language was fluent, frequently fine ; his enuncia- 
tion always rapid ; his ideas clear and vigorous, 
and he had the rare power of modulating his pecu- 
liarly fine voice, so as to harmonize with whatever 
subject he touched upon. I have heard him talk 
with astonishing rapidity, nor miss the articulation 
of a single syllable ; elevate and depress his voice as 
the topic seemed to require ; and sometimes, when 
the subject was pathetic, he would prolong the 
words in the most impressive and affecting manner, 
indicative of the deep sensibility which inspired him. 
He often lamented to me that fortune had not placed 
him at the bar or in the senate ; he had great ambi- 
tion, and the feeling that he could not gratify it 
preyed upon him severely/' 

In the morning of life, Burns met lords with awe 
and embarrassment ; in the afternoon of existence, 
he encountered them with suspicion or scorn. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 349 

Those who named a lord, or alluded to a person of 
rank in his company, were instantly crushed in an 
epigram, or insulted by some sarcastic sally. The 
conduct of the Scottish aristocracy had sunk to his 
heart, and the neglect of the Pitt administration was 
seldom away from his fancy. The more he saw of 
the world, and the more he reflected, these unwel- 
come thoughts j)ressed the more upon him. He 
could not but know that the high-born and the well- 
connected prospered : that thousands less worthy 
than himself were fattening on posts and pensions, 
and elbowing the sons of genius out of w T hat he 
reckoned their patrimony ; he had also been made 
to feel his dependence, in that insulting mandate 
from the Board of Excise, that his duty was " to act, 
and not to think." It is true that his dislike might 
have been expressed with more courtesy, and his wit 
might have had less ferocity, with equal keenness of 
point. Yet, when he proposed to drink the health 
of "Washington instead of Pitt, it was less a matter of 
ill-breeding, or republican feeling, than a burst of 
anger : he considered the Premier as one of his op- 
pressors — and perhaps the want of courtesy belonged 
to him who invited the Poet to dinner, and greeted 
him with this unwelcome toast. 

In the company of ladies, Burns was quite another 
being : for them he calmed down his impetuous 
temper, and allowed all that was winning in his 
nature to shine out. He was fierce as Moloch among 
men ; among women he was a Belial, soft, insinu- 
ating and eloquent : his eyes, which before sparkled 
like those of the serpent, became meek like those of 
the dove : the love of contradiction died within him, 



350 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

and he courted his way to their hearts and their un- 
derstandings at the same time. In this his letters 
differ widely from his conversation : the presence of 
beauty inspired him ; when it was no longer before 
him he seems to hunt for thoughts and hesitate for 
words, and, amid much natural emotion, is affected 
and cumbrous. Nothing more untrue was ever ut- 
tered than that his female patronesses shrunk from 
the vehement familiarity of his admiration ; there is 
no proof to be found of this : Margaret Chalmers, 
indeed, scrupled to have a song published in her 
praise : and Miss Alexander chose to resent by her 
silence the song of the " Lass of Ballochmyle ;" but 
there is no instance of ladies shrinking from the 
audacity of his admiration. His most constant cor- 
respondents were ladies of birth and talent ; the 
ladies of the north, much to their honour, sympa- 
thized with their Poet to his last ; and the day after 
he was buried some of the proudest dames of Dum- 
frieshire shed tears as they scattered flowers over his 
grave. In truth, he did not express the rapture of an 
enamoured peasant, as Jeffrey assures us he did, but 
the admiration of a man : he preferred the good- 
breeding of nature to the iced civilities of polished 
life ; he did not, indeed, think that woman was to 
be worshipped according to the fantastic rules of 
chivalry ; but when she spoke, he listened ; when 
she sang, he seemed to become intoxicated with the 
sound ; and when she played on an instrument, he 
neither heard nor saw ought else save herself and her 
music. 

To the opinions of the world Burns paid too little 
deference ; whatever he felt he said, and what he 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 351 

said often glanced sharply on religion and on po- 
litics. He attacked the fiery zeal of sundry church- 
men — it was called an attack on religion ; he at- 
tacked the pride and presumption of the titled — it 
was called envy and arrogance : he wished for more 
wealth among the poor, and more humility among 
the rich — and was branded as a disturber of the 
public peace ; and he desired to see the principles of 
the revolution of 1688 carried into effect with less 
corruption in the high places — and was called a jaco- 
bin, and ordered to be silent. 

What he was with the world at large, so was he 
with man in particular : he had no medium in his 
hatred or his love ; he never spared the dull, as if 
they were not to be endured because he was himself 
bright ; wealth he was inclined to visit as a fault on 
the possessor. When in the company of the demure 
and the pious, he loved to start doubts in religion, 
which he knew nothing short of inspiration could 
solve ; and to speak of Calvinism with such latitude 
of language as shocked or vexed all listeners, and 
caused him to be regarded by some as a freethinker 
or a deist. In his own household he was another 
man : he was an affectionate husband and a dutiful- 
father ; he loved to teach his boys their duty to God 
and to their neighbour. To Mrs. Haugh — a most 
respectable woman — in whose house he lived in the 
Eank-Vennel, and who was much with him during 
his long illness — he lamented that he had sometimes 
doubted the truths-of Scripture : he found them to 
be his consolation at last. 

I have no wish to shut my eyes on the follies of 
the Poet ; they have darkened other narratives than 



352 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

mine. The • memoir of Heron, the criticism of 
Jeffrey, and the communications of Syme have gone 
widely abroad. With the first, Burns is a coarse 
libertine ; with the second, a cureless drunkard, who 
starved his wife and children ; while the third de- 
scribes him as rough and fierce, and inclined to stab 
the friend who hazarded good advice. Of the feel- 
ings of Heron, it is sufficient to say that he penned 
his depreciating memoir to meet the subscription for 
the Poet's widow and children : of the opinion of 
Jeffrey, I may safely assert that he has judged amiss ; 
and with regard to the account of Syme, I can only 
imagine that it originated in some mistake on the 
part of him of Ryedale : — to suppose Burns serious, 
contradicts all the rest of his life. Of Heron, the 
Poet must have thought when he said,— " I have 
often, in blasting anticipation, listened to some 
future hackney scribbler with the heavy malice of 
savage stupidity exulting in his hireling paragraphs." 
Burns was no tippler ; he loved the excitement of 
company, and to see the bottle circulate ; to others, 
as well as to him, 

" Every new cork was a new spring of joy." 

Nor did he know always when to retire from these 
social excesses ; good fellowship was as a spell 
upon him. His own heart, always too open, was 
then laid bare. He watched the characters of men ; 
he gladdened the clever by the sallies of his fancy, 
stimulated the dull by his wit, and imagined that 
he was strengthening the ties of friendship, and 
that 

•' The bands grew the tighter the more they were wet." 

No doubt, later in life he desired to escape from 



THE JJFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 353 

uneasy reflection — from thinking of ruined hopes and 
humbled ambition, and, seeking consolation in com- 
pany, took an angel of darkness to his heart rather 
than one of light. I am assured by Mrs. Haugh, 
who knew him well to the last, that Burns drank 
from circumstances rather than inclination. An 
angel from heaven, she said, could scarcely have 
escaped corruption in his situation ; he was con- 
stantly invited, nay sometimes almost literally 
dragged into company. Her husband now and then, 
as he went out by day-light in the morning to his 
work, met Burns coming home. The Poet never 
passed him without a word or two, expressing his 
sorrow for the life he was leading — such as, " O, Mr. 
Haugh, you are a happy man ; you have arisen from 
a refreshing sleep, and left a kind wife and children, 
while I am returning a poor self-condemned wretch 
to mine." At whatever hour he came home, or in 
whatever condition he returned, he always spoke 
kindly to his wife ; reproachful words were never 
heard between them. He was a steadfast friend and 
a good neighbour, ready with his hands and willing 
to oblige : while he lived in Ellisland, few passed 
his door without being cheered by his wit or treated 
at his table. 

Of women and their fascinations he loved to talk 
freely and wildly ; the witchery of his conversation, 
and the magic of his songs, were too powerful for 
the resolution of some ; but his errors in this way 
have been seriously exaggerated. Those who were 
unacquainted with the freedoms of the muse beheld 
him making love in every song he wrote ; and young 
spinsters — 

VOL. I. A A 



354 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

** Coost their heads fu' hiegh," 

when they saw their charms reflected in the bright 
verses of the Bard, and suspectedtheir own fortitude. 
Some were less timid : one intrepid young lady said 
she desired the Poet's acquaintance of all things,, 
and intimated the time and place where he might 
meet her. He took a way which did not always 
succeed, of scaring such impertinents. — " Itis scarcely 
modest in a fine young woman," was his reply, " to 
seek the acquaintance of one whose character is 
considered so bad." To a lively landlady in Dum- 
fries, whose ale firkins were to be examined, he 
said, — " Who will go down to the cellar with me 
till I gauge the browst ?" — " I'll go down with 
you myself, Mr. Burns," she replied. He turned 
round on her, and, with a peculiar glance, said, — 
" O, woman, strong is thy faith !" Stories of this 
complexion, oftener for than against him, might be 
multiplied : — 

" Between two maids, who hath the merriest eye 
He had, indeed, no shallow spirit of judgment." 

The political heresies of the Poet are more easily 
dealt with. He knew that he was created with 
high powers of mind ; he was conscious not only 
of his superiority to the peasants around, but to 
men of high title and of long descent, and felt him- 
self defrauded of the station nature intended him to 
fill in society : — this is visible in almost all he writes. 
He can justify the ways of God to man, but he can- 
not justify the ways of man to God; he feels that 
heaven makes nothing hereditary — neither beauty, 
taste, nor talent ; and he is grieved to see men 
insult the great laws of nature, and form institu- 
tions contradicting God's divine system. This is 



THE LIFE OF ROEERT BURNS. 355 

the sentiment which inspires that noble lyric " A, 
man's a man for a' that;" and it was this feeling 
which made him sad and desponding — which in- 
duced him to seek consolation in the shadowy images 
of republics, and hail with so much rapture the 
dawn of a liberty which promised the empire of the 
earth to the worth and genius which it produced. 
That Pitt did not feel truly, or weigh worthily, the 
genius and sentiments of the " meteor of the north," 
as the Poet was idly called, seems perfectly clear. 
When reminded of his claims by Henry Addington, 
he pushed the bottle to Lord Melville, and did no- 
thing ; his own days were shortened by disappoint- 
ed hopes and crushed ambition. Had a situation 
worthy of the genius of Burns been bestowed on 
him, this tale had neither been so dark nor so sor- 
rowful — he would not have perished like a caged 
eagle, denied the full use of its wings and the free 
range of its cloud-capt mountains. 

Of his modes of study and habits of life much has 
already been said ; something more can be added. 
He has told us how he delighted in the rushing of 
the storms through the leafless woods ; how he re- 
joiced in the out-gushing of the flowers in spring, 
in the song of the birds and the melody of running 
waters. In stormy nights he has been known to 
rise from good company and a well-furnished table, 
to gaze on the tumultuous clouds, mark the vivid 
lightnings, and hearken the pealing thunder. He 
loved, while in his farm, to stand on the scaur, and, 
when Xith was in flood, look at the red torrent 
bursting from the Bankhead-wood against Dais win - 
ton holm, flashing and foaming from side to side, 

A A 2 



356 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

making the ashes and alders of the banks quiver and 
quake. His favourite spot of study lies between 
Ellisland onstead and the Isle — where the uplands 
descend by the water side to the holm. Here the 
neighbouring gentry love to walk, and peasants to 
assemble: — they hold it sacred to the memory of 
his musings. 

When he lived in Dumfries he had three favourite 
walks — on the dock-green by the river side — among 
the ruins of Lincluden College, and — towards the 
Martington-Ford on the north side of the Nith. 
This latter place was secluded, commanded a view 
of the distant hills and the romantic towers of Lin- 
cluden, and afforded soft greensward banks to rest 
upon, and the sight and sound of the stream :- — 
here he composed many of his finest songs. As 
soon as he was heard to hum to himself his wife 
saw that he had something in his mind, and was 
quite prepared to see him snatch up his hat and set 
silently off for his musing ground. When by him- 
self and in the open air, his ideas arranged them- 
selves in their natural order, words came at will, and 
he seldom returned without having finished a song. 
In case of interruption, he set about completing it 
at the fire-side ; he balanced himself on the hind 
legs of his arm-chair, and rocking to and fro con- 
tinued to hum the tune, and seldom failed of suc- 
cess. When the verses were finished, he passed 
them through the ordeal of Mrs. Burns' voice ; lis- 
tened attentively while she sung ; asked her if any 
of the words were difficult, and when one happened 
to be too rough he readily found a smoother — but 
he never, save at the resolute entreaty of a scientific 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 357 

musician, sacrificed sense to sound. The autumn 
was his favourite season, and the twilight his favour- 
ite hour of study. 

As a farmer and an exciseman he did his duty, 
and he did little more. He was laborious by fits, 
attentive by starts ; he tilled the ground and pro- 
tected the revenue, but he wrought without hope in 
the one, and without heart in the other. He en- 
deavoured to make his farm yield the rent by butter 
and by cheese, as well as by corn ; and as this re- 
quired female hands, he confided it mostly to the 
management of his wife and maid- servants. But 
Ellisland is naturally fitter for corn than for grass ; 
the greensward was far from so luxuriant as that of 
the milk and butter districts of Cunningham and 
Kyle ; nor was his wife sufficiently intimate with the 
management of cows and the guidance of a dairy. 
The plan of Burns to unite, in his own person, the 
poet, the exciseman, and the farmer, was poetic, 
and failed as much from miscalculation as misma- 
nagement. His duties in the Excise he performed 
with strict punctuality ; he was afraid of being 
reckoned negligent, and was always at his post. 
He kept his books in excellent order. — " Bring me 
Burns' books," said Maxwell of Terraughty, a rigid 
and determined magistrate ; "it always does me 
good to see them — they shew me that a warm kind- 
hearted man may be a diligent and honest officer." 
He was not a bustling active gauger, nor did he love 
to put himself foremost in adventures which he 
knew would end in distress to many. One clear 
moonlight morning, on being awakened by the clang 
of horses at a gallop, he started up, looked out at 



358 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

the window, and to his wife, who asked eagerly 
what it was, he whispered, " It is smugglers, Jean." 
— " Robert, then I fear ye'll be to follow them?'* 
she said. — " And so I would," he answered, "were 
it Will Gunnion or Edgar Wright ; " but it's poor 
Brandyburn, who has a wife and three weans, and 
is no doing owre weel in his farm. What can I 
do ?" She pulled him from the window. Many 
anecdotes of this kind might be told. 

Of his quick wit and caustic keenness of remark 
I have already given instances ; more are in circu- 
lation both in prose and verse. It is much, how- 
ever, to be regretted that his sallies, where senti- 
ment unites with gaiety, have frequently escaped, 
as matters too light and elusive, from the public 
mind ; while sayings and retorts — sharp, personal, 
or profane — have remained. I shall relate a few, 
that nothing on which his spirit is impressed may 
be lost. He disliked puns, and was seldom civil to 
those who uttered them. — " After all, a pun is an 
innocent thing," said one of his companions. — 
" Innocent ?" said Burns , " no, sir ; it is com- 
mitting ■ a deed without a name' with the lan- 
guage." He disliked to hear great people talked 
about more than they deserved. One who was in 
his company kept saying the Earl of such a place 
said this, and Duke so-and-so said that. — " Have 
done, sir !" exclaimed the Poet ; " you are stopping 
our mouths by a royal proclamation," He loved 
praise — and loved it not the less when it came from 
the lips of an accomplished lady. — " Madam," said 
he to Mrs. M'Murdo, " your praise has ballooned 
me up Parnassus." — " My merit is not all my own," 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 359 

he said to Robert Aikin of Ayr, " for you have read 
me into reputation." He called once on a cer- 
tain lord in Edinburgh, and was shewn into the 
library. To amuse himself till his lordship was 
at leisure, he took down a volume of Shakspeare 
splendidly bound, and on opening it discovered, 
from the gilding, that it had never been read ; 
also, that the worms were eating it through and 
through. Some dozen years afterwards, another 
visiter took down the same volume, and found 
the following lines pencilled by Burns on the first 
page : — 

" Through and through the inspired leaves 
Ye maggots make your windings ; 
But, oh ! respect his lordship's taste, 
And spare his golden bindings." 

Burns paid little deference to the artificial dis- 
tinctions of society. On his way to Leith one 
morning, he met a man in hoddin' gray — a west- 
country farmer ; he shook him earnestly by the 
hand, and stopt and conversed with him. All this 
was seen by a young Edinburgh blood, who took 
the poet roundly to task for this defect of taste. — 
" Why, you fantastic gomeral," said Burns, " it was 
not the gray coat, the scone-bonnet, and the San- 
quhar boot-hose I spoke to, but the man that was 
in them ; and the man, sir, for true worth, would 
weigh you and me, and ten more such, down any 
day." His discernment was great : when Scott 
was quite a lad he caught the notice of the Poet, by 
naming the author of some verses describing a sol- 
dier lying dead on the snow. Burns regarded the 
future minstrel with sparkling eyes, and said, 
" Young man, you have begun to consider these 



360 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

things early." He paused on seeing Scott's flush- | 
ing face — shook him by the hand, saying in a deep 
tone, " This boy will be heard of yet." 

Speaking one day of his own poetry, Burns said, 
" I have much to answer for : my success in rhyme 
has produced a shoal of ill-spawned monsters who 
imagine, because they make words clink, they are 
poets. It requires a will-o'-wisp to pass over the 
quicksands and quagmires of the Scottish dialect. 
I am spunkie — they follow me, and sink." To one 
who was frugal of his wine at table, and who was 
standing holding up a fresh bottle, saying, " Do 
allow me to draw this one cork more ; I ask it 
as a favour."— " Sir," said Burns, " you hold the 
screw over the cork like Abraham holding the knife 
above his son Isaac — make the sacrifice !" On 
hearing a gentleman sneering at the Solemn League 
and Covenant, and calling it ridiculous and fa- 
natical, the Poet eyed him across the table, and 
exclaimed, 

" The Solemn League and Covenant 

Cost Scotland blood — cost Scotland tears — 
But it sealed Freedom's sacred cause; — 
If thou'rt a slave, indulge thy sneers." 

Of the farm of Ellisland, when some one said it 
was good ground, Burns answered, " And so it is, 
save what is stones. It is not land, sir ; it is the 
riddlings of the creation!" While at Moffat once 
with Clarke the composer, the Poet called for a 
bumper of brandy. — " Oh, not a bumper," said the 
musician — "I prefer two small glasses." — "Two 
glasses?" cried Burns, " why, you are like the lass 
in Kyle, who said she would rather be kissed twice 
bareheaded than once with her bonnet on." At the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 361 

table of Maxwell of Terraughty, when one of the 
guests chose to talk of the dukes and earls with 
whom he had drank or dined, Burns silenced him 
with an epigram : — 

" What of earls with whom you have supt, 

And of dukes that you dined with yestreen ? 
Lord ! a louse, sir, is still but a louse, 
Though it crawl on the curls of a queen." 

On one occasion, being storm-stayed at Laming- 
ton in Clydesdale, he went to church, but was so 
little pleased with the preacher and the place, that 
he left a poetic record on the church- window against 
them : — 

se As cauld a wind as ever blew, 
A caulder kirk, and in't but few ; 
As cauld a minister's e'er spak, 
Ye'se a' be het ere I come back." 

" I dined with Barns," said Mrs. Montagu, " at 
Arbigland : he was witty ; drank as others drank ; 
and was long in coming to the tea-table. It was 
then the fashion for young ladies to be busy about 
something — I was working a flower. The Poet sat 
down beside me, talked of the beauty of what I was 
imitating, and put his hand so near the work, that 
I said, ' Well, take it, and do a bit yourself,' — ' O, 
ho !' said he, ' you think my hand is unsteady with 
wine. I cannot w T ork a flower, madam ; but — ' he 
pulled the thread out of the needle, and re-threaded 
it in a moment — * can a tipsy man do that?* He 
talked to me of his children, more particularly of his 
eldest son, and called him a promising- boy — * And 
yet, madam,' he said, with a sarcastic glance of his 
eye, * I hope he will turn out a glorious blockhead, 
and so make his fortune.' " Burns assumed, as well 



362 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

he might, the title of Poet : he was none of those 
who insult the taste of their admirers by depreciating 
the merit of their own works : on one of his books, 
in my possession, there is written, in his own rough 
free, manly hand, " Robert Burns, Poet ;" an imita- 
tion of this is added to the admirable portrait. On 
the collar of a favourite dog he had the same words 
engraven. 

As a poet, Burns stands in the first rank : his con- 
ceptions are original ; his thoughts new and weighty ; 
his manner unborrowed ; and even his language is 
his own. He owes no honour to his subjects, for 
they are all of an ordinary kind, such as humble life 
around him presented : he sought neither in high 
station nor in history for matter to his muse, and yet 
all his topics are simple, natural, and to be found 
without research. The Scottish bards who pre- 
ceded him selected subjects which obtained notice 
from their oddity, and treated them in a way sin- 
gular and outre. The verses of the first and fiftl^ 
James, as well as those of Ramsay and Ferguson, 
are chiefly a succession of odd and ludicrous pic- 
tures, as true as truth itself, and no more. To their 
graphic force of delineation Burns added sentiment 
and passion, and an elegant tenderness and simpli- 
city. He took topics familiar to all ; the Daisy 
grew on the lands he ploughed ; the Mouse built 
her nest on his own stubble-field ; the Haggis 
smoked on his own board ; the Scotch Drink which 
he sung was distilled on the banks of Doon ; the 
Dogs that conversed so wittily and wisely were his 
own collies ; Tarn O'Shanter was a merry husband- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 363 

man of his own acquaintance ; and even the " De'il 
himsel" was familiar to all, and had often alarmed, 
by his eldritch croon and the marks of his cloven foot, 
the pastoral people of Kyle. Burns was the first 
who taught the world that in lowly subjects high 
poetry resided. Touched by him, they were lifted 
at once into the regions of inspiration. His spirit 
ascended into an humble topic, as the sap of spring 
ascends a tree to endow it with beauty and fra- 
grance. 

Burns is our chief national Poet ; he owes nothing 
of the structure of his verse or of the materials of his 
poetry to other lands — he is the offspring of the soil ; 
he is as natural to Scotland as the heath is to her 
hills, and all his brightness, like our nocturnal 
Aurora is, of the north. Nor has he taken up fleeting 
themes ; his song is not of the external manners and 
changeable affectations of man — it is of the human 
heart — of the mind's hopes and fears, and of the 
soul's aspirations. Others give us the outward form 
and pressure of society — the court-costume of human 
nature — the laced lapelle and the epauletted shoulder. 
He gives us flesh and blood ; all he has he holds in 
common with mankind, yet all is national and Scot- 
tish. We can see to whom other bards have looked 
up for inspiration — like fruit of the finest sort, they 
smack of the stock on which they were grafted. 
Burns read Young, Thomson, Shenstone, and Shak- 
speare ; yet there is nothing of Young, Thomson, 
Shenstone, or Shakspeare about him ; nor is there 
much of the old ballad. His light is of nature, like 
sunshine, and not reflected. When, in after life, he 
tried imitation, his " Epistle to Graham of Fintry " 



364 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

shewed satiric power and polish little inferior to 
Dryden. 

He is not only one of the truest and best of Scottish 
Poets, but, in ease, fire, and passion, he is second to 
none save Shakspeare. ' I know of no one besides, 
whose verse flows forth so sparkling and spontaneous. 
On the lines of other bards, we see marks of care and 
study — now and then they are happy, but they are 
as often elaborated out and brightened like a key by 
frequent handling. Burns is seldom or never so — 
he wrote from the impulse of nature — he wrote be- 
cause his passions raged like so many demons till 
they got vent in rhyme. Others sit and solicit the 
muse, like a coy mistress, to be kind ; she came to 
Burns " unsent for," like the " bonnie lass " in the 
song, and showered her favours freely. The strength 
was equal to the harmony ; rugged westlan words 
were taken from the lips of the weaver and the 
ploughman, and adorned with melody and feeling ; 
and familiar phrases were picked up from shepherds 
and mechanics, and rendered as musical as Apollo's 
lute. — " I can think of no verse since Shakspeare's," 
said Pitt to Henry Addington, " which comes so 
sweetly and at once from nature. ( Out of the eater 
came forth meat :' " — but the premier praised whom 
he starved. Burns was not a poet by fits and starts ; 
the mercury of his genius stood always at the inspired 
point ; like the fairy's drinking-cup, the fountain of 
his fancy was ever flowing and ever full. He had, 
it is true, set times and seasons when the fruits of 
his mind were more than usually abundant ; but 
the songs of spring were equal to those of summer — 
those of summer were not surpassed by those of 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 365 

autumn ; the quantity might be different, the flavour 
and richness were ever the same. 

His variety is equal to his originality. His humour, 
his gaiety, his tenderness, and his pathos come all in 
a breath ; they come freely, for they come of their 
own accord ; nor are they huddled together at ran- 
dom, like doves and crows in a flock ; the contrast 
is never offensive ; the comic slides easily into the 
serious, the serious into the tender, and the tender 
into the pathetic. The witch's cup, out of which the 
wondering rustic drank seven kinds of wine at 
once, was typical of the muse of Burns. It is 
this which has made him welcome to all readers. — 
" No poet," says Scott, " with the exception of 
Shakspeare, ever possessed the power of exciting the 
most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid 
transitions." * 

Notwithstanding the uncommon ease and natural 
elegance of his musings — the sweet and impas- 
sioned tone of his verse, critics have not been want- 
ing who perceived in his works the humility of his 
origin. Yet his poems, I remember well enough, were 
considered by many, at first, as the labours of some 
gentleman who assumed the rustic for the sake of 
indulging in satire ; their knowledge was reckoned 
beyond the reach, and their nights above the power, 
of a simple ploughman. Something of this belief may 
be seen in Mrs. Scott of Wauchope's letter ; and 
when it was known for a truth that the author was a 
ploughman, many lengthy discussions took place 
concerning the way in which the Poet had acquired 
his knowledge, Ayr race-course was pointed out as 
the likely scene of his studies of high life, where he 



366 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

found what was graceful and elegant ! When 
Jeffrey wrote his depreciating criticism, he forgot 
that Burns had studied politeness in the very school 
where he himself was polished : — 

" I've been at drunken writers' feasts, 

claims a scholarship which the critic might have re- 
spected. If sharp epigrams, familiar gallantry, love 
of independence, and a leaning to the tumid be, as 
that critic assures us, true symptoms of vulgar birth, 
then Swift was a scavenger, Rochester a coalheaver, 
Pope a carman, and Thomson a boor. He might as 
well see lowness of origin in the James Stuart who 
wrote " Christ's Kirk on the green," as in the Robert 
Burns who wrote " Tarn O' Shanter." The nature 
which Burns infused into all he wrote deals with in- 
ternal emotions : feeling is no more vulgar in a 
ploughman than in a prince. 

In all this I see the reluctance of an accomplished 
scholar to admit the merits of a rustic poet who not 
only claimed, but took, the best station on the Cale- 
donian Parnassus. It could be no welcome sight to 
philosophers, historians, and critics to see a peasant, 
fragrant from the furrow, elbowing his way through 
their polished ranks to the highest place of honour, 
exclaiming, — 

" What's a' your jargon o' your schools ?" 

Some of them were no doubt astonished and in- 
censed ; nature was doing too much : they avenged 
themselves by -advising him to leave his vulgar or 
romantic fancies and grow classical. His best songs 
they called random flights ; his happiest poems the 
fruit of a vagrant impulse ; they accounted him an 
accident — " a wild colt of a comet " — a sort of splen- 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 367 

did error ; and refused to look upon him as a true 
poet, raised by the kindly warmth of nature ; for 
they thought nothing beautiful which was not pro- 
duced or adorned by learning. 

Burns is a thorough Scotchman ; his nationality, 
like cream on milk, floats on the surface of all his 
works ; it mingles in his humour as well as in his 
tenderness ; yet it is seldom or never offensive to an 
English ear ; there is nothing narrow-souled in it. 
He rejoices in Scotland's ancient glory and in her 
present strength ; he bestows his affection on her 
heathery mountains, as well as on her romantic 
vales ; he glories in the worth of her husbandmen, 
and in the loveliness of her maidens. The brackeny 
glens and thistly brae-sides of the North are more 
welcome to his sight than the sunny dales of Italy, 
fragrant with ungathered grapes ; its men, if not quite 
divinities, are more than mortal ; and the women are 
clothed in beauty, and walk in a light of their own 
creating ; a haggis is food fit for gods ; brose is a 
better sort of ambrosia ; " wi' twopenny we fear nae 
evil ;" and whiskey not only makes us insensible of 
danger, but inspires noble verse and heroic deeds. 
There is something at once ludicrous and dignified 
in all this : to excite mingled emotions was the aim 
of the Poet. Besides a love of country, there is an 
intense love of freedom about him ; not the savage 
joy in. the boundless forest and the unlicensed range, 
but the calm determination and temperate delight of 
a reflecting mind. Burns is the bard of liberty — 
not that which sets fancy free and fetters the body ; 
he resists oppression-— he covets free thought and 
speech — he scorns slavish obedience to the mob as 



368 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

much as he detests tyranny in the rulers. He spoke 
out like a bold-inspired person ; he knew his word 
would have weight with the world, and sung his 
" A man's a man for a' that," as a watch-word to 
future generations — as a spell against slavery. 

The best poems of Burns are about rural and pas- 
toral life, and relate the hopes, joys, and aspirations 
of that portion of the people falsely called the humble, 
as if grandeur of soul were a thing " born in the pur- 
ple," and not the free gift and bounty of heaven. 
The passions and feelings of man are disguised, not 
changed, in polished society ; flesh and blood are 
the same beneath hoddin' gray as beneath three- 
piled velvet. This was what Burns alluded to when 
he said he saw little in the splendid circles of Edin- 
burgh which was new to him. His pictures of human 
life and of the world are of a mental as well as 
national kind. His "TwaDogs" prove that hap- 
piness is not unequally diffused : " Scotch Drink " 
gives us fire-side enjoyments; the " Earnest Cry and 
Prayer" shews the keen eye which humble people 
cast on their rulers ; the " Address to the Deil " in- 
dulges in religious humanities, in which sympathy 
overcomes fear ; " The Auld Mare," and " The Ad- 
dress to Mailie," enjoin, by the most simple and 
touching examples, kindness and mercy to dumb 
creatures ; " The Holy Fair " desires to curb the 
licentiousness of those who seek amusement instead 
of holiness in religion; " Man was made to Mourn " 
exhorts the strong and the wealthy to be mindful of 
the weak and the poor ; " Halloween " shews us 
superstition in a domestic aspect; " Tarn O'Shan- 
ter" adorns popular belief with humorous terror, and 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 369 

helps us to laugh old dreads away ; " The Mouse," 
in its weakness, contrasts with man in his strength, 
and preaches to us the instability of happiness on 
earth ; while " The Mountain Daisy " pleads with 
such moral pathos the cause of the flowers of the field 
sent by God to adorn the earth for man's pleasure, 
that our feet have pressed less ungraciously on the 
" wee modest crimson-tipped flower," since his song 
was written. 

Others of his poems have a still grander reach. 
" The Vision " reveals the Poet's plan of Providence, 
proves the worth of eloquence, bravery, honesty, and 
beauty, and that even the rustic bard himself is an 
useful and ornamental link in the great chain of 
being. " The Cotter's Saturday Night" connects 
us with the invisible world, and shews that do- 
mestic peace, faithful love, and patriotic feelings are 
of earthly things most akin to the joys of heaven ; 
while the divine " Elegy on Matthew Henderson " 
unites human nature in a bond of sympathy with the 
stars of the sky, the fowls of the air, the beasts of 
the field, the flowery vale, and the lonely mountain. 
The hastiest of his effusions has a wise aim ; and the 
eloquent Curran perceived this when he spoke of the 
" sublime morality of Burns." 

Had Burns, in his poems, preached only so many 
moral sermons, his audience might have been a 
^elect, but it would have been a limited one. The 
sublirnest truths, like the surest medicines, are some- 
times uneasy to swallow : for this the Poet provided 
an effectual remedy ; he associated his moral counsel 
with so much tenderness and pathos, and garnished 
it all about with such exquisite humour, that the 

VOL. I, B B 



370 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

public, like the giant drinking the wine in Homer, 
gaped, and cried, " More ! this is divine !" If a 
reader has such a limited soul as to love humour 
only, why Burns is his man — he has more of it than 
any modern poet : should he covet tenderness, he 
cannot read far in Burns without finding it to his 
mind ; should he desire pathos, the Scottish Peasant 
has it of the purest sort ; and if he wish for them 
mingled, let him try no other Bard — for in what 
other poet will he find them woven more naturally 
into the web of song ? It is by thus suiting himself 
to so many minds and tastes, that Burns has become 
such a favourite with the world ; if, in a strange 
company, we should chance to stumble in quoting 
him, an English voice, or an Irish one, corrects 
us ; much of the business of life is mingled with 
his verse ; and the lover, whether in joy or sorrow, 
w T ill find that Burns has anticipated every throb of 
his heart : — 

" Every pulse along his veins, 
And every roving fancy." 

He was the first of our northern poets who brought 
deep passion and high energy to the service of the 
muse, who added sublimity to simplicity, and found 
loveliness and elegance dwelling among the cottages 
of his native land. His simplicity is graceful as well 
as strong ; he is never mean, never weak, never 
vulgar, and but seldom coarse. All he says is above 
the mark of other men : his language is familiar, yet 
dignified ; careless, yet concise ; and he touches on 
the most ordinary — nay, perilous themes, with a 
skill so rare and felicitous, that good fortune seems 
to unite with good taste in helping him through the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 371 

Slough of Despond, in which so many meaner spirits 
have wallowed. No one has greater power in adorn- 
ing the humble, and dignifying the plain — no one 
else has so happily picked the sweet fresh flowers of 
poesy from among the thorns and brambles of the 
ordinary paths of existence. 

" The excellence of Burns," says Thomas Car- 
lyle — a true judge, " is, indeed, among the rarest, 
whether in poetry or prose ; but at the same time it 
is plain and easily recognized — his sincerity — his 
indisputable air of truth. Here are no fabulous 
woes or joys ; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities ; 
no wire-drawn refinings either in thought or feeling : 
the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a 
living heart ; the opinion he utters has risen in his 
own understanding, and been a light to his own 
steps. He does not write from hearsay, but from 
sight and experience : it is the scenes he has lived 
and laboured amidst that he describes ; those scenes, 
rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful 
emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite 
resolves ; and he speaks forth what is in him, not 
from any outward call of vanity or interest, but be- 
cause his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks 
it, too, with such melody and modulation as he can 
— in homely rustic jingle — but it is his own, and 
genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers, 
and retaining them : let him who would move and 
convince others, be first moved and convinced him- 
self." 

It must be mentioned, in abatement of this high 
praise, that Burns occasionally speaks with too 
little delicacy. He violates without necessity the 
b b 2 



372 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

true decorum of his subject, and indulges in hidden 
meanings and allusions, such as the most tolerant 
cannot applaud. Nor is this the worst : he is much 
too free in his treatment of matters holy. He ven- 
tures to take the Deity to task about his own pas- 
sions, and the order of nature, in a way less reverent 
than he employs when winning his way to woman's 
love. He has, in truth, touches of profanity which 
make the pious shudder. In the warmth of con- 
versation such expressions might escape from the 
lips ; but they should not have been coolly sanc- 
tioned in the closet with the pen. These deformities 
are not, however, of frequent occurrence ; and, what 
is some extenuation, they are generally united to a 
noble or natural sentiment. He is not profane or 
indecorous for the sake of being so : his faults, as 
well as his beauties, come from an overflowing 
fulness of mind. 

His songs have all the beauties, and few of the 
faults, of his poems. As compositions to be sung, 
a finer and more scientific harmony, and a more 
nicely-modulated dance of words were required, and 
Burns had both in perfection. They flow as readily 
to the music as if both the air and verse had been 
created together, and blend and mingle like two 
uniting streams. The sentiments are from nature ; 
and they never, in any instance, jar or jangle with 
the peculiar feeling of the music. While humming 
the air over during the moments of composition, the 
words came and took their proper places, each ac- 
cording to the meaning of the air : rugged expres- 
sions could not well mingle with thoughts inspired 
by harmony. 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 373 

In his poems Burns supposes himself in the 
society of men, and indulges in reckless sentiments 
and unmeasured language : in his songs he imagines 
himself in softer company ; when woman's eye is on 
him he is gentle, persuasive, and impassioned ; he 
is never boisterous ; he seeks not to say fine things, 
yet he never misses saying them ; his compliments 
are uttered of free will, and all his thoughts flow 
naturally from the subject. There is a natural grace 
and fascination about his songs ; all is earnest and 
from the heart : he is none of your millinery bards 
who deal in jewelled locks, laced garments, and 
shower pearls and gems by the bushel on youth and 
beauty. He makes bright eyes, flushing cheeks, 
the music of the tongue, and the pulses' maddening 
play do all. Those charms he knew came from 
heaven, and not out of the tire-woman's basket, and 
would last when fashions changed. It is remarkable 
that the most naturally elegant and truly impassioned 
songs in the language were written by a plough- 
man lad in honour of the rustic lasses around him. 

If we regard the songs of Burns as so many pas- 
toral pictures, we will find that he has an eye for 
the beauties of nature as accurate and as tasteful as 
the happiest landscape painter. Indeed he seldom 
gives us a finished image of female loveliness with- 
out the accompaniment of blooming flowers, running 
streams, waving woods, and the melody of birds : 
this is the frame -work which sets off the portrait. 
He has recourse rarely to embellishments borrowed 
from art ; the lighted hall and the thrilling strings 
are less to him than a walk with her he loves by 
some lonely rivulet's side, when the dews are begin- 



374 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

ning to glisten on the lilies and weigh them down 
and the moon is moving not unconsciously above 
them. In all this we may recognize a true poet — 
one who felt that woman's loveliness triumphed over 
these fragrant accompaniments, and who regarded 
her still as the " blood royal of life," the brightest 
part of creation. 

Those who desire to feel, in their full force, the 
songs of Burns, must not hope it from scientific 
singers in the theatres. The right scene is the 
pastoral glen ; the right tongue for utterance is that 
of a shepherd lass ; and the proper song is that 
which belongs to her present feelings. The gowany 
glen, the nibbling sheep, the warbling birds, and 
the running stream give the inanimate, while the 
singer herself personates the living, beauty of the 
song. I have listened to a country girl singing one 
of his songs, while she spread her webs to bleach by 
a running stream — ignorant of her audience — with 
such feeling and effect as were quite overpowering. 
This will keep the fame of Burns high among us : 
should the printer's ink dry up, ten thousand melo- 
dious tongues will preserve his songs to remote 
generations. 

The variety, too, of his lyrics is equal to their 
truth and beauty. He has written songs which echo 
the feelings of every age and condition in life. He 
personates all the passions of man and all the gra- 
dations of affection. He sings the lover hastening 
through storm and tempest to see the object of his 
attachment — the swelling stream, the haunted wood, 
and the suspicious parents are all alike disregarded. 
He paints him again on an eve of July, when the 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 375 

air is calm, the grass fragrant, and no sound is abroad 
save the amorous cry of the partridge, enjoying the 
beauty of the evening as he steals by some unfre- 
quented way to the trysting thorn, whither his mis- 
tress is hastening; or he limns him on a cold and 
snowy night, enjoying a brief parley with her whom 
he loves, from a cautiously opened window, which 
shews her white arm and bright eyes, and the shadow 
perhaps of a more fortunate lover, which accounts 
for the marks of feet impressed in the snow on the 
way to her dwelling. Nor is he always sighing and 
vowing ; some of his heroes answer scorn with scorn, 
are saucy with the saucy, and proud with the proud, 
and comfort themselves with sarcastic comments on 
woman and her fickleness and folly ; others drop all 
allegiance to that fantastic idol beauty, and while 
mirth abounds, and " the wine-cup shines in light," 
find wondrous solace. He laughs at the sex one 
moment, and adores them the next — he ridicules 
and satirizes — he vows and entreats — he traduces 
and he deifies — all in a breath. Burns was intimate 
with the female heart, and with the romantic mode 
of courtship practised in the pastoral districts of 
Caledonia. He was early initiated into all the mys- 
teries of rustic love, and had tried his eloquence 
with such success among the maidens of the land, 
that one of them said, " Open your eyes and shut 
your ears with Rob Burns, and there's nae fear o' 
your heart ; but close your eyes and open your ears, 
and you'll lose it." 

Of all lyric poets he is the most prolific and 
various. Of one hundred and sixty songs which he 
communicated to Johnson's Museum, all, save a 



376 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

score or so, are either his composition, or amended 
with such skill and genius as to be all but made his 
own. For Thomson he wrote little short of a hun- 
dred. He took a peculiar pleasure in ekeing out 
and amending the old and imperfect songs of his 
country. He has exercised his fancy and taste to a 
greater extent that way than antiquarians either like 
or seem willing to acknowledge. Scott, who per- 
formed for the ballads of Scotland what Burns did 
for many of her songs, perceived this : — " The Scot- 
tish tunes and songs," he remarked, " preserved for 
Burns that inexpressible charm which they have ever 
afforded to his countrymen. He entered into the 
idea of collecting their fragments with the zeal of an 
enthusiast ; and few, whether serious or humorous, 
passed through his hands without receiving some of 
those magic touches which, without greatly altering 
the song, restored its original spirit, or gave it more 
than it previously possessed. So dexterously are 
those touches combined with the ancient structure, 
that the rifacciamento, in many instances, could 
scarcely have been detected without the avowal of 
the Bard himself. Neither would it be easy to mark 
his share in the individual ditties. Some he ap- 
pears to have entirely rewritten ; to others he added 
supplementary stanzas ; in some he retained only 
the leading lines and the chorus ; and others he 
merely arranged and ornamented." No one has 
ever equalled him in these exquisite imitations ; he 
caught up the peculiar spirit of the old song at once ; 
he thought as his elder brother in rhyme thought, 
and communicated an antique sentiment and tone to 
all the verses which he added. Finer feeling, purer 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 377 

fancy, more exquisite touches of nature, and more 
vigorous thoughts were the result of this intercourse. 
Burns found Scottish song like a fruit-tree in 
winter, not dead, though unbudded; nor did he 
leave it till it was covered with bloom and beauty. 
He sharpened the sarcasm, deepened the passion, 
heightened the humour, and abated the indelicacy 
of his country's lyrics. 

" To Burns' ear," says Wilson— a high judge in 
all poetic questions — " the lowly lays of Scotland 
were familiar, and most dear were they all to his 
heart. Often had he * sung aloud old songs that 
are the music of the heart;' and, some day, to be 
able himself to breathe such strains was his dearest, 
his highest ambition. His genius and his moral 
frame were thus imbued with the spirit of our old- 
traditionary ballad poetry ; and, as soon as all his 
passions were ripe, the voice of song was on all 
occasions of deep and tender interest— the voice of 
his daily, his nightly speech. Those old songs were 
his models ; he felt as they felt, and looked up with 
the same eyes on the same objects. So entirely was 
their language his language, that all the beautiful 
lines, and half-lines, and single words that, because 
of something in them most exquisitely true to na- 
ture, had survived the rest of the compositions to 
which they had long ago belonged, were sometimes 
adopted by him, almost unconsciously it might seem, 
in his finest inspirations ; and oftener still sounded 
in his ear like a key-note, on which he pitched his 
own plaintive tune of the heart, till the voice and 
language of the old and new days were but as one." 
He never failed to surpass what he imitated ; he 



378 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 

added fruit to the tree, and fragrance to the flower. 
That his songs are a solace to Scottish hearts in far 
lands we know from many sources ; the poetic tes- 
timony of an inspired witness is all we shall call for 
at present : — 

" Encamped by Indian rivers wild, 
The soldier, resting on his arms, 
In Burns' carol sweet recalls 
The scenes that blessed him when a child, 
And glows and gladdens at the charms 
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls." 

A want of chivalry has been instanced as a radi- 
cal fault in the lyrics of Burns. He certainly 
is not of the number who approach beauty with 
much awe or reverence, and who raise loveliness 
into an idol for man to fall down and worship. The 
polished courtesies and romantic affectations of high 
society had not found their way among the maidens 
of Kyle ; the midnight tryste, and the stolen inter- 
view — the rapture to meet, and the anguish to part — 
the secret vow, and the scarce audible whisper, were 
dear to their bosoms ; and they were unacquainted 
with moving in parallel lines, and breathing sighs 
into roses, in the affairs of the heart. To draw a 
magic circle of affection round those he loved, which 
could not be passed without lowering them from the 
station of angels, forms no part of the lyrical system 
of Burns' poetic wooing : there is no affectation in 
him ; he speaks like one unconscious of the ve- 
neered and varnished civilities of artificial life ; he 
feels that true love is unacquainted with fashion- 
able distinctions, and in all he has written has 
thought but of the natural man and woman, and 
the uninfluenced emotions of the heart. Some have 



THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. 379 

charged him with a want of delicacy — an accusation 
easily answered ; he is rapturous, he is warm, he is 
impassioned — his heart cannot contain its ecstacies ; 
he glows with emotion as a crystal goblet with 
wine ; but in none of his best songs is there the 
least indelicacy. Love is with him a leveller : pas- 
sion and feeling are of themselves as little influenced 
by fashion and manners as the wind is in blowing, or 
the sun in shining ; chivalry, and even notions of 
delicacy, are changeable things ; our daughters 
speak no longer with the free tongues of their great- 
grandmothers, and young men no longer challenge 
wild lions, or keep dangerous castles in honour of 
their ladies' eyes. 

The prose of Burns has much of the original merit 
of his poetry ; but it is seldom so pure, so natural, 
and so sustained. It abounds with bright bits, 
fine out-flashings, gentle emotions, and uncommon 
warmth and ardour. It is very unequal ; sometimes 
it is simple and vigorous ; now and then inflated 
and cumbrous ; and he not seldom labours to say 
weighty and decided things, in which a " double 
double toil and trouble" sort of labour is visible. 
" But hundreds even of his most familiar letters" — I 
adopt the words of Wilson — " are perfectly artless, 
though still most eloquent compositions. Simple 
we may not call them, so rich are they in fancy, so 
overflowing in feeling, and dashed off in every other 
paragraph with the easy boldness of a great master, 
conscious of his strength even at times when, of all 
things in the world, he was least solicitous about 
display ; while some there are so solemn, so sacred, 
so religious, that he who can read them with an un- 



380 THE LIFE OF ROBERT BUR>rS. 

stirred heart can have no trust, no hope, in the im- 
mortality of the soul." But those who desire to feel 
him in his strength must taste him in his Scottish 
spirit. There he spoke the language of life : in 
English, he spoke that of education ; he had to think 
in the former before he could express himself in the 
latter. In the language in which his mother sung 
and nursed him he excelled ; a dialect reckoned bar- 
barous by scholars, grew classic and elevated when 
uttered by the tongue of Robert Burns. 



END OF VOLUME I. 



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